Chapter 5 Capítulo 5

First Hour - Eighth Floor

Renan had almost won the couch.

Almost, because Ed had discovered the only countermeasure stronger than ownership: volume. Gunfire barked from the computer speakers in ugly bursts, each one landing in the back of Renan's skull while the show on the television tried and failed to make its jokes louder.

"Headphones," Renan said.

"Remote," Ed said, eyes fixed on the game.

"On the TV?"

"Technology is hard. You'll adapt."

Renan threw a cushion. Ed ducked without looking, which was infuriating because of course he did. The cushion hit the wall, slid behind the desk, and disappeared into the place where old receipts and dead insects went to become history.

"I got here first," Renan said.

"You came rolling from college and passed out on the couch."

"Still first."

"Not a legal category."

Renan opened his mouth to explain, with brotherly patience, where Ed could file his legal categories. The pain hit before the first word.

It closed around his heart like a fist.

He dropped from the couch. Not gracefully. One knee hit the floor, then a hand, then his shoulder when the hand failed. Across the room, Ed's chair shot backward and slammed into the shelf. The game kept firing without him.

For a few seconds there was only breath trying to become breath again.

"Alive?" Ed said from somewhere near the desk.

Renan pressed his cheek to the floorboards. "Unfortunately."

"Same."

The apartment lights flickered. The television cut to black, came back, cut again. In the second of darkness, something scratched at the bedroom door.

Renan lifted his head.

Scratch.

Small. Patient.

"Tell me that's your game," Renan said.

Ed's screen had frozen on a soldier mid-explosion. "That's not my game."

Scratch.

Renan got to his feet slowly because his chest still hurt and because dying upright felt more dignified than dying sprawled under a coffee table. Ed grabbed the first thing within reach: a civil engineering textbook big enough to murder a semester. Renan took the lamp, unplugged it, thought about the exposed cord, and decided electrocution would be an embarrassing final chapter.

"We open together," Ed said.

"We leave closed together."

The bedroom door jumped in its frame.

Something inside clicked. Not a lock. Legs.

Renan backed away. Ed did not. Of course Ed did not. Ed had been born with the survival instinct of a golden retriever near traffic.

"Ed."

"I know."

"Do you?"

"Probably not."

The door split.

The thing that came through had too many legs and not enough hesitation. Cat-sized, low to the ground, black plates sliding over one another along its back. Bone points jutted from its head like somebody had tried to build a crown out of teeth. Its feet clicked on the tile. Six legs. Maybe eight. Renan started counting and stopped when the mouth opened sideways.

"No," Renan said.

The creature leaped.

Ed swung the textbook. Too early. The thing hit the book's edge, skidded over it, and slammed into Ed's chest. He went down hard. Renan brought the lamp down with both hands and hit the creature across the back.

The lamp bent.

The creature did not.

"Expensive lamp," Renan said, because his mouth was the least useful part of him and insisted on proving it.

The thing turned.

Fresh rain filled the room.

Not from outside. The windows were closed. It came from Ed, from his split fingers, from a sudden wet-earth smell that belonged in a garden after stormwater, not in an eighth-floor apartment full of old pizza boxes.

Ed shoved one palm forward.

Wood burst from his fingers.

A spike, pale and wet and fast, grew out of the first two fingers and fired before Ed had time to be horrified by the fact that his hand had become a weapon. It caught the creature under the ribbed belly and punched it into the wall so hard the framed diploma above the desk jumped off its hook.

The creature hung there, pinned and kicking.

Ed stared at his hand.

Renan stared at Ed's hand.

"You grew ammunition," Renan said.

"I broke the monster."

"From your hand."

"Did you see that?"

"No. I was busy enjoying my normal evening."

The pinned creature thrashed. The spike cracked. Ed raised his hand again, face bright with terror pretending to be excitement.

"I can do it again."

"That sounded like a question wearing a stupid hat."

Ed shoved his palm forward.

Nothing happened.

The creature tore free.

Ed tried again, harder. This time the growth came too fast. Too many thorns split out of his fingers at once, dry and mean and wrong. They shot sideways. One sliced Renan's cheek. Another buried itself in the television screen with a soft, final pop.

Renan touched the cut on his face. Blood came away on his fingers.

"Good news," he said. "You found a miracle and I still get the blood."

Ed's smile died.

The creature came at them low. Renan stepped left, slipped on a magazine, and went down as the thing passed over him. Its legs scraped his shoulder. Hot lines opened through his shirt. He yelled, grabbed the bent lamp, and hooked the cord around one hind leg.

"Now!" he shouted.

Ed did not answer. He was looking at his own palm, where the skin had split in three places. Not bleeding red. Not only red. Something green-brown glistened under the blood, thick as sap.

"Ed!"

Ed blinked.

The creature dragged Renan half a meter across the floor. Claws clicked near his ear. The smell of wet earth sharpened until it tasted like metal.

The creature snapped for Renan's throat.

Renan threw his forearm up.

Bone came with it.

White plates shoved through the skin from wrist to elbow, locking over his arm in a crooked shield. The bite hit bone instead of throat. Pain flashed so bright Renan saw nothing for half a second, but the teeth did not get through.

Ed screamed and fired with both hands.

Thorns came out in a hard wet burst. Three missed. Two struck the wall. One punched through the creature's open mouth and pinned the back of its skull to the floor. It shuddered. Kicked once. Went still.

For a while neither brother moved.

The game unfroze behind them. Someone in Ed's headset shouted a slur, then asked if he was AFK.

Renan laughed once. It came out wrong.

Ed sat back on his heels. His hands were shaking. Blood and sap dripped from his fingers onto the floor.

Renan stared at the bone wrapped around his forearm.

"I did that," Ed said.

"Yes."

"I don't know how."

"Also yes."

From the hallway came a scream.

Not television. Not game. Human. Close.

Renan closed his eyes. "No."

Another scream. A child's this time.

Ed was already turning toward the door.

"No," Renan said again, stronger. "We barely survived one."

Ed looked at the pinned body. Then at his hands. Then at the door, where the scream came again, thinner now.

"They're kids."

"That's not an argument. That's emotional blackmail with shoes."

Ed grabbed the textbook. New thorns pushed halfway from his fingertips when he moved, as if his hands had started listening to him and hated being ignored.

Renan picked up the lamp.

"I hate you," he said.

"I know."

They opened the door.

The corridor smelled of blood, wet earth, and black dust. Farther down, a family had backed into the corner by the trash room while three small things clicked toward them. Ed lifted his hand. The split skin on his palm opened wider.

A word rose out of him before he could stop it.

"Eccos," Ed whispered.

Renan looked at him. "What?"

Ed's face had gone blank around the fear.

"I don't know."

Renan looked at his brother's raised hand. Blood on the fingers. Sap in the cuts. Green-brown under skin where nothing green-brown had any business being. Then at his own forearm, where white bone still sat over the skin like armor that had mistaken him for someone braver.

Then he tightened his grip on the bent lamp and followed it into the corridor.