It was late at night, and I was walking down the street in front of the house with Martina. After dropping the bombshell, Frank had seemed to think for a second and then shrug, accepting Martina’s assertion that Sam was an actual God. Sarah and I both wanted to call bullshit, but I had to get out of the house and move. I had been through a bit too much and often when I get this way, I needed to be moving.

  Since Frank was still bed bound and recovering, Sara perched herself next to him and they had begun comparing notes and Frank was telling her the truth of what he had been doing with Sam and Broadhead. I found I didn’t actually care anymore.

  I couldn’t sit there any longer, and asked Martina if she would walk with me while they caught up so we could all get a good night's sleep and finish the debrief in the morning over breakfast and coffee. She had agreed immediately and we walked out the front door and randomly turned left and started walking.

  I ignored the mental flash of a painted blue face trying to speak to me. It was happening enough that I was getting used to it. “Tell me about Sam, please?” I asked

  “Why? You don’t want to know about me?” She asked with a sly glint in her eyes.

  Surprised and flustered, I said, “What?”

  She laughed and patted my shoulder. “I’m teasing, che.” She hesitated a second. “And maybe flirting a little.”

  “Hell of a time to flirt.” I said before thinking.

  She frowned. “Meh. Pembéro wasn’t completely lying when he said we Iara have strong physical drives, but I was actually being friendly. Truth is, we Iara feel very strong emotions all the time. It's one of the ways we're built different than humans.”

  “I’m sorry, I tend to talk and act without thinking sometimes. I didn’t mean to imply anything.”

  “No problem.”

  “So…You flirt when under stress? I tend to make wildly inappropriate jokes. And kill people.”

  She looked up and seemed to realize what I had done and smiled ruefully at herself. “Got me.”

  “Just giving you a good example.” I said while I smiled back at her.

  We walked in a comfortable silence for a few minutes quietly looking at the lit houses and occasionally getting a glimpse of the lake from behind fences and driveways.

  “Che…I have to ask. Please don’t get upset with me, okay?”

  "I can’t promise anything,” I replied, “but I’ll try.”

  “Sarah calls you family, and that makes you my family too. I take that seriously, but…”

  “But I worked for the government hunting down Extras.”

  “For money. You weren’t forced to do it, like Frank was. Like we all are.”

  I paused for a second. I realized I needed to answer this question in a way she could accept or we were going to have a real problem in our group. And I totally understood what she was asking, and where she was coming from. In her eyes, I was a killer of her friends and family while also being a member of her family. Not a lot of people can live with that cognitive dissonance. Of course, I knew it was a normal part of life for some of us. I decided to lead with that.

  “I’ve killed family before. It’s not something you ever get over. I’ve also been a soldier my entire life. I was seven fucking years old the first time I had to kill someone in self-defense. All I’ve ever been is a soldier.” Of course I was lying. I’d also been a victim before becoming a warrior.

  “I didn’t ask to be in the Nightmare Squad, I was transferred there when I made the mistake of shooting a Taliban soldier from the back of a fast moving truck one too many times in front of my superiors. I got put in for a medal. Got transferred instead. Once they figured out it was a knack and that I didn’t freak out when I saw a monster, that was it. I was in for the duration. But I have to be honest. I wasn’t forced against my will, Martina. I didn’t have a choice, but I didn’t actually care. Frank was right about me, I was pretty much a war dog. They pointed, released the leash, and I killed whatever was in front of me.”

  She was silent for a moment digesting this, and, to her credit, she let me off the hook and asked me, “Why don’t monsters freak you out?”

  “Grew up with them.” Another flash of a blue face, screaming this time.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Everybody always is.” I ground out. ”Nobody ever does anyfuckingthing about it. In the Squad I get to do something about it. I get to kill real monsters.”

  She slapped me on the shoulder. Hard. “Che. Listen to yourself. You sound exactly like me. And Sarah. And Sam. About the abuse of all of us non humans. We have less rights and less protection than babies! And nobody ever does anyfuckingthing about it,” she repeated my words to me.

  I pulled up short and froze. Right there on the sidewalk. I looked at Martina - really looked at her - for the first time. She was scared of me, but she was willing to risk it. She was a true believer, and she was doing something about her people’s plight. Every day. And she knew that eventually she’d get caught and die. I could see it in her eyes.

  Impulsively, I did something I never do: I reached out and gathered her into a hug, shocking us both, and saying, “I hear you. I’m sorry, too. But I’ll help you do something about it if I can. Starting with Broadhead. I’ll be your friend if you’ll let me.”

  She hugged me back immediately and spoke into my ear, “You better, because so many are done putting up with this abuse. Some of us are fighting to be free, but many others are trying to bring our Gods back to make us free, and if that happens, the world is fucked. I don’t know how else to say it, this abuse of the innocent is about to destroy the world. Genetics and species have nothing to do with it. It's the monsters created through abuse that will destroy our world. It’s that simple.”

  I whispered back, “I don’t want to be a war dog. It was a job I didn’t know I could quit. If you can trust me a little, I’ll try to be something else.”

  “Family?”

  No. I can’t be that, even though it’s the thing I desperately want to be. Family. “No, I’ll try to be a person, not some animal biting everybody who comes close.”

  She pulled back and stared into my eyes with a thoughtful expression on her face. “You are a person Dru. But there's nothing wrong with being like a dog, provided you're loyal. A good dog never bites family. Their loyalty is absolute. They attack anything that threatens their family. Can you do that? Because that might be exactly what we all need.”

  I smiled grimly, still in the longest hug of my life. I remembered the one time, long ago, when I had a family of choice worth defending. Before they all died. I decided to ignore the implication of family and answer honestly at the same time. “I’ve done it once before. And I was pretty good at it.”

  The Blue face smiled in my head and I realized that she had been part of my first family. I stood stunned, realizing I had known that all along. I even knew her name, but I couldn't bear to think it, even to myself. And like Martina, she had seen my flaws and invited me into her life anyway.

  We let each other go, and she sniffed a little and looked at me with that smile firmly back in place and said, “And what’s this ‘friend’ thing? Next you’ll be asking to be ‘friends with benefits’, I bet.”

  “Well, I’m sure as hell not going to be asking for your hand in marriage. I barely know you!”

  She laughed, “Wildly inappropriate jokes.”

  “Flirting.” I replied.

  We walked a few more minutes in silence, trying to get used to each other and this crazy attempt at belonging. I asked, “Can you tell me more about magic?”

  “Sure. There’s not much left of it today, but it seems to be a side effect of what’s easiest explained as multiverse resonance.”

  “Oh…that’s the easy explanation…yeah.” We turned around and began heading back up the street towards the house.

  “Ok, so bear with me. I’m going to use terms that are pretty pop culture right now, and, to be honest, I’ll be using them somewhat incorrectly because it’s hard to explain, but these concepts are close enough to make sense for the layman, okay?”

  “Like Schr?dinger's Cat?” I asked “Existing and not existing at the same time?”

  “Exactly.” She sighed. “Or should I say exactly wrong. It’s all about potential expressions of reality and how observation is connected to those expressions. So let's start with the fact that everybody thinks they know what a multiverse is, but they’re wrong. They almost know what it is, but the math and science isn’t sure yet. There’s lots of debate and argument. We really don’t know. However, what we do know and what makes sense in certain mathematical models is that things we’ll call universes but are actually expressions of reality resonate at specific frequencies, and when these frequencies touch or overlap, they can theoretically coexist if they are what I’ll call “harmonically balanced”. However, that ‘balance’ actually prevents waveform collapse, or in simpler terms, reality doesn’t settle into one expression.

  "In pop culture, you'll often have some hero describe the multiverse as splitting off into a new universe with every action or event. In fact, it's the opposite. That universe exists, has always existed, and will always exist in a specific timeframe, and it's the one where that reality manifests itself.

  Reality expresses itself, and all expressions are equally viable, until something acts upon it to make one 'more real' than all the others. That something is when we observe. Then the waveform collapses into a single reality. Then that reality is what we experience. Our experience of that reality is what defines our universe, not the other way around. We don't create universes through actions, we create reality in our universe. You and I exist in this universe and we will always exist in this universe, there is no hopping around or alternate timelines, or any of that movie stuff. There is only this universe for us, constantly and uniformly expressed as reality unfolds in what we perceive as time. And again, everything I have told you is wrong, but it’s the easiest way to explain it without a whiteboard and eight years of advanced mathematics."

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “So. Magic. Remember, we’re talking universes overlapping at sub-atomic levels where physics doesn’t do what you think it does. This is not supposed to happen. There is something inherently 'wrong' with the Gods. They do something that disrupts our model of reality-based multiverses. At this level, it’s my belief that the ability to consciously manipulate potential expressions of reality becomes possible because technically, there are two opposed expressions of reality coexisting already. In effect, physics shrugs, throws up its metaphorical hands, and says, ‘Whatever, dude. You decide what’s real, I can’t figure it out.”

  “I admit I have almost no idea what you’re saying, Martina. What has this got to do with Gods?”

  “Well, Gods existing on our planet are the actual nexus points for this overlap. They are not from our universe. That I know for sure. What I don't know is why they can exist in our reality at all. It's the unanswered question. They are the physical location of the resonance, so around them, ‘magic’ is possible for those that have figured out how to do it.”

  “And how do we do it?”

  “No idea. But Gods themselves had insanely strong magical abilities, and many of their priests were the strongest human mages on the planet.”

  “But you don’t know how?”

  “No. But Raven said…”

  “Wait, who?”

  “Sam. Raven. He is the Trickster God of the Haida people, or maybe of every people in the Americas, though he won’t admit any of it to me. But it’s obvious. He has pretty strong magic compared to anyone else, and his offspring are all Pembéros.”

  “Okay - you’re moving way too fast. Tell me again...”

  She sighed and put a hand on my chest, arresting my forward motion. “Like Sam said, Pembéros are what we call a type of mischievous imp in Argentina and Brazil. What he left out was that they are all his bastard sons. They trick, they tease, they fuck. Just like their Papá.

  "Gods. Are. Real. Accept it, Dru.”

  I sighed and forced myself to say it out loud, “I do.” My body hurt. I needed a painkiller bad.

  “Good. Now, if we stick to this idea of ‘resonance’ we can make certain guesses and develop a few theories. I personally think that way back we used to believe that the only ‘real’ things we knew existed were Gods. Kind of the opposite of science, you know?”

  “Oh yes, I get you. That makes total sense.”

  “So if we all believed in our gods, and Gods did magic, the more you believed, the more likely you were to match that resonance and be able to perform magic of your own. You sort of fit into the reality of magic.”

  “That sounds a little crazy. Like, wish upon a star or close your eyes and say there’s no place…”

  “Yeah, Dru, I get it. But what I’m trying to say in simple terms is that reality was fluid and could be shaped by will - if the intention was in tune with what you already assumed existed there. And what existed there…”

  “... was a God that already created two realities at once.” I finished, trying to make this all fit in my head..

  “Correct. In essence, there was no set reality except the God itself, only belief, expectation, and crucially, observation that created what we perceived as real as time unfolded.”

  “Mass delusions that became real?” I asked.

  “Sort of. Remember we’re making up imagery to explain mathematics here, and - no offense - you’re not educated enough to understand the math.”

  “No offense taken. This stuff makes my head hurt.”

  “So take it to the next step. A strong will, and matching resonance, and the understanding that you can create a mass delusion, or, even stronger, shape reality all by yourself even if others are not part of what you called that mass delusion.”

  “Maybe even simpler language?”

  “Glamour versus creation. Magic can fool you with illusions, or, if the mage is good enough, actually make real things happen. You know, a God could disguise themselves to mess with mortals, or it could throw a legit lightning bolt. Right in the middle is a powerful function of magic - the Geas. That was what they did to you and Frank.”

  “Yeah! Explain that to me. I’ve always hated the idea that somebody could erase my memories.”

  “Well, based on what I’ve learned from Raven, you can’t. It’s not erasing, it’s making a tiny change to your perceptions of reality – and remember perception, observation, is reality- and laying a strong illusion over it. A Geas in it's most basic form is nothing more than an oath or promise of some kind. A declaration about you and your existence that something can not ever happen or must always happen. And then a magical reinforcement to tie that to reality.

  "In this case we're discussing, it is an illusion that something never happened or can’t happen or definitely did happen, and that tiny change to your perception so that the illusion becomes more 'real' than what actually happened. You never forgot, you instead believed it didn’t or did happen, and who thinks about things that never happened or questions perfect memories? Then add a subtle hypnotic suggestion on top to change the subject whenever it comes up…”

  “Then dead villagers and slaughtered children don’t show up in your memory of the day.”

  “Or you lay a nastier suggestion that you will never listen to people talk about Gods and Broadhead together – it's impossible. So when somebody breaks that Geas by talking about it – you go crazy, they must be monsters, and you have to kill them to fix reality.”

  “Well shit.”

  We were almost back to the house when we saw two black SUV’s come screaming down the street. There was no attempt at stealth, and it was obvious what was happening. We had been found out somehow.

  Standing out in the open or rushing down the sidewalk to the house seemed like a bad idea, so we ducked down behind the neighbors fence beside us and watched as the cars screeched to a halt, and a man jumped out from the passenger side of each SUV holding something in their hands. I couldn't tell what it was until they both pulled the pins and threw the incendiary grenades at the house. Both had good aim, and the grenades went through the window.

  The men jumped back into their SUVs and took off down the street like a pair of scalded cats. As they passed our hiding spot, the grenades went off inside the house and the entire night was lit up with a fiery explosion.

  Martina and I stood up and sprinted to the house. As we arrived at the front door, Broadhead's plan became clear as we saw a firetruck come barreling down the street arriving impossibly fast for it to be anything other than a part of said plan to murder us in public and get away with it. No way those were actual firefighters.

  The explosion had been confined to the front room of the house and the front door was still attached to the door frame, but it was bent askew and easily yielded to my kick. The fire and heat were extreme and pulled us up short as we tried to get in. It was too hot and we were stymied.

  Martina screamed into the house, “Sarah! Sarah, can you hear me?”

  Over the roar of the fire we could hear Sarah’s voice, “I’m getting Frank and we’re going out the back! Help!”

  Abandoning the front, we rushed around to the back as the fire engine came around the corner about 4 blocks away and careened towards the house. We arrived at the back door and Sarah was there, having opened it for us. Frank was in a generic wheelchair and Sarah had a huge field medics bag on the floor next to her.

  “What happened?” She asked.

  “Broadhead.” I replied. “We’ve been found out. There’s a fire truck pulling up outside, but it’s full of men coming to kill us.”

  The house was going up in flames as the fire licked around the door jam of the kitchen and the heat was extraordinary. We had to go. Now.

  “Where are the weapons?” I asked.

  “Lost.” Frank replied. “We have to go now. The fire engine has arrived. We have no time.”

  Shit. That meant I had 17 rounds total. “Time to run.” I said, running behind Frank and grabbing the handles of the wheelchair and starting to push. “Where are we running to?”

  “Boat house.” Both Sarah and Martina said in unison.

  We ran out the back and down the long dark path to the boat house as quickly and as quietly as we could. No need to let the mercenaries know where we are. Unfortunately, Broadhead had got their heads out of their asses and planned this one a little better than they had at Sarah's house that first time.

  As we arrived at the end of the hundred and fifty foot long footpath and snuck into the boat house, a black flat-bottomed boat with a big damn spotlight motored up towards us and we needed to duck behind Martina’s ski boat tied to the dock and take cover. Frank’s indignant squawk as I tipped him and his chair over onto the pavement would have been hilarious under any other circumstances, but we had to stay quiet and still as the spotlight lit up the boat house, and only the fact that there was this small ski boat between us and them saved our lives.

  Martina quietly wriggled past me and up to the end of the dock behind the ski boat. She looked at me and smiled the nastiest smile I had seen in a long time. I mouthed “What are you doing?” without actually speaking the words, and she smiled wider and stripped her shoes off and began undressing. Momentarily stunned I had a crazy thought that Martina was actually flirting with me until she tossed her clothes onto her ski boat beside us and slid silently - nakedly - into the water and disappeared.

  Pretty stupid, Dru. She’s a fucking mermaid. I suddenly felt sorry for the guys in the boat.

  Sarah waved to get my attention and mouthed, ”Do you have the gun, Dru?” while pantomiming shooting with her index finger. I nodded my assent and pulled the gun from my waistband to show her. She held her hand up and pointed to her ear and mouthed “Listen” and put her hand out in a stop gesture while saying, “Wait.” Next she tapped her watch and mouthed, “Be ready.” and put her hand back to her ear, listening.

  We sat like that for about ten seconds, listening to the house burn and faint voices of mercenaries communicating their growing frustration as they found no bodies in the house for them to kill.

  I took a chance and slid my head out past the side of the ski boat to get a look at the Broadhead guys, so I was treated to an amazing sight as Martina launched herself straight out of the water behind the boat and wrapped her whole body around one of the killers and simply fell back into the water with him. There was a high pitched scream, a huge splash, and the spotlight began waving wildly about. I popped up over the hull of the ski boat and saw two guys in the boat looking into the water frantically searching for their squad-mate. As I watched, the guy in the stern of the boat lifted his rifle to fire into the lake, so I decided to fire into him at the same time.

  As he pulled the trigger on his gun, I pulled the trigger on mine and shot him twice center mass, knocking him off the boat and into the water.

  Unfortunately, the act caused their boat to rock wildly and the bazillion watt searchlight fell full onto my face and into my eyes, blinding me with its spectacularly bright white light. It was actually excruciating and I was totally, temporarily, blind.

  I felt someone grab me and Sarah spoke into my face, “Are you alright?

  “I can’t see! Take the gun!” I flipped the gun around and handed the pistol out into the space I thought she might be. A hand took it.

  Inexplicably, the last guy on the boat hadn’t started firing at us. Sarah didn’t start firing at him. I was confused. “What’s going on?” I yelled.

  I felt a pair of incredibly strong hands grab me and Frank whispered from inches away, “Be quiet! Men are coming down the path! Martina is finishing off the third guy.”

  Then Martina yelled out to us, “It’s clear! Get to the boat! Hurry!

  I couldn’t help it, “Hurry? How the fuck are we supposed to hurry? A blind guy, a guy with no fucking feet, and a woman 4 inches shy of six feet to carry us both? For fucks sake, we’re going to die here.”

  Frank was still holding on to me and he said, “Roll onto your stomach soldier!” I instantly followed my orders and rolled onto my stomach as my Lieutenant pulled himself onto my back and put his arms around my neck and shoulders. “Get up, Dru and move it! I’m your eyes, you’re my feet. Move!”

  I pushed up to my feet and struggled to stand up with a human on top of me, but I got it done and Sarah grabbed my hand and pulled me along. “Let’s go!" She said.

  All attempts at stealth were abandoned and the three of us moved along the pier, Sarah leading, Frank whispering ”Move a little to the left” and me walking like a child in the pitch black, blinking furiously, trying to regain my sight.

  I bumped into the boat at the end of the pier and turned my body to let Frank off my back. As I did so, Sarah said, “Shit!” And I was shoved violently into the boat, falling on top of Frank, eliciting the second hilarious squawk of the last two minutes right before I heard Sarah fire off three rounds at what I could only assume were the evil fake firemen who had found us.

  The boat I was lying in surged forward and sped off into the lake as my vision began to return to me. I looked forward and saw a fuzzy outline of a naked mermaid standing at the helm of the ski boat, legs braced apart, back straight, and hair flying out behind her. Behind us, her house burned to the ground. She was magnificent, and I found myself wishing that she could have been my sister after all.

  Over her shoulder she called out to us, “There’s a public dock down about 5 miles. Hopefully we can get there before they figure out that’s where we’re heading. But we have a big problem.

  “What’s that?” Frank called out from under me as he extricated himself.

  “That first guy I pulled overboard? He was an Hombre el Gato. An ugly guy that looked like a cat standing on its hind legs. They’re using Extras in public.”