When Chai Si was little, Uncle Kai sometimes took him camping in the mountains.
Deep in the mountains, far from the sleepless clamor of Blackmoor City, heaven and earth were dark and still. Apart from a glowing red campfire, all he could see were the stars overhead; he had never seen such pure darkness, as though even the forest had fallen silent in outer space.
Uncle Kai taught him to recognize the constellations, softly connecting stars across the star-filled sky into the shape of a dipper, a great bear... The mountain nights were cold, and he always brought two extra blankets. Young Chai Si sat beside Uncle Kai, wrapped completely in a blanket, his gaze drifting through the universe.
Now, at this very moment, he thought again of those lines between the stars.
Although it was nowhere near as beautiful as the stars, several points of light seemed to be gradually emerging on the subway driver before him, too, ready to be connected into a shape.
That vague shape gave him a theory.
One: "A woman's body was discovered after the subway stopped running"-a fact, from a recent news report.
Two: "Someone was attacked after finishing a night shift"-Chai Si was not yet sure whether this was true; it might have been one of the hundreds or thousands of everyday news stories in Blackmoor City.
Three: "A female detective and a male professor team up to investigate a series of crimes"-a television show.
There were the three elements that made up the rumor.
Seen that way... his appearance on the subway was like a sudden flash of lightning, illuminating something in the driver's mind.
Before seeing Chai Si, the subway driver had shown none of his supposed "paranoia" or "fear"; when he was walking alone through the empty subway cars, he had even been humming.
Yet the moment he saw a tall man holding a weapon, the subway driver had clearly lost the ability to distinguish truth from fiction for a brief instant-the three points above were rapidly pieced together, creating a rumor that "a Subway Serial Killer has appeared recently" in the space of a single breath.
Interestingly, when the driver blurted out the rumor, he himself wholeheartedly believed what he had just created, and even began fearing for his own life because of it.
...So this was how the "rumor" Phantasm worked?
Combining and adapting raw information, letting the finished rumor flow out of someone's mouth... that was only the first step. To understand what came next, he would probably have to get hold of the Phantasm itself.
No, that wasn't right. Perhaps he should call it one of the ways it worked.
Judging from all the signs, the subway driver was merely a repository containing enough key information, a mouth that could spread the words. He had no idea what had influenced him, no awareness of it whatsoever-it was hard to imagine Wei Xilai letting a Phantasm control him rather than controlling the Phantasm himself.
There had to be a way to actively use it, to deliberately create rumors; that simply was not the most pressing issue right now.
The most important thing now was to get the Phantasm into his hands first.
Chai Si stared at the subway driver's cheek, watching a bulge that seemed to be his tongue pressing against it slide past-it had happened several times already.
"Spit out whatever's in your mouth."
The driver froze. "In my mouth? There's nothing in there."
Chai Si looked at him without speaking.
"Really, there's nothing. I just have a habit of pressing my tongue against the inside of my mouth." Under his gaze, the driver immediately panicked and said soothingly, "If you don't believe me, I'll open my mouth. Look-"
With some displeasure, Chai Si directed his gaze into that fleshy red cavity.
He had seen plenty of human insides. Although he was used to them, he still found them slick and ugly.
The inside of a human mouth was strange. Looking closely for long enough even made him think of alien creatures-the quivering red throat, the fuzzy tongue, always sliding and rolling slightly through a gleaming layer of fluid, as though they had wills of their own.
But however ugly they were, they were not Phantasms; apart from what belonged in a human mouth, there was nothing extra in the driver's.
Of course, Chai Si had never expected him to spit out the Phantasm so easily, so coming up empty did not disappoint him-after all, if there really were something in his mouth, how could he not notice? Evan could not slip something into someone's mouth without their knowing.
Although he still did not know the Phantasm's form or appearance, if it was hidden inside the man's flesh, extracting it would probably mean spilling some blood and dirtying his hands... A subway train being kept in reserve was not an ideal location. As the driver had said, someone might arrive soon.
Chai Si grabbed his collar and was just about to lift him when the driver suddenly seemed to realize something. He began struggling and kicking fiercely, crying, "Where are you taking me?"
He was a broad, fat, heavy man, and someone else might really have struggled to subdue him-but the moment Chai Si sensed him move, he released his grip and simultaneously kicked sideways with his right foot, striking the man's ankle hard. The other man had barely let out a cry of pain when Chai Si's T-shaped baton buried itself deep in his belly, smashing the breath, balance, and strength out of his body all at once. He crumpled toward the floor without a sound.
Before the driver could fall all the way down, Chai Si caught the back of his clothes and held him like a bag of groceries.
Only this bag of groceries was rather large, its limp legs still dragging along the floor.
"I'm very interested in this rumor business," Chai Si said conversationally as he dragged him forward. "I only want to talk. Whether you want to have that talk in one piece or missing an arm or a leg is up to you."
The driver could not even breathe properly. For a while, he could manage nothing but broken, indistinct groans; Chai Si decided to take his agreement as understood.
Only after carrying him another few steps did he vaguely make out a few words among the groans-Chai Si stopped.
He glanced outside the window. It seemed no one would be coming into the dark, silent subway tunnel for a while yet.
"What did you say?" He bent down and prompted almost gently, "Say it more clearly."
The driver said something else, his articulation and voice extremely muffled.
Even using his imagination, Chai Si could only make out a few inexplicable words, seemingly "wire," "broken," and "electricity." He could not piece together what they meant at all.
He was about to ask the driver to repeat himself when something suddenly occurred to him.
He knew how heavy-handed he was, which was why he had deliberately held back just now. Besides, a blow to the belly with a baton should not leave someone unable to speak clearly more than ten seconds later.
Come to think of it... had the driver opened his mouth when he spoke just now?
As though pricked by that thought, he flung out his hand, sending the driver rolling onto the floor like a bundle.
The man's face flashed upward before rolling toward the floor again, but that brief instant was enough for Chai Si to see clearly-the skin of the driver's face was stretched taut and thin, his lips pressed together until they were almost invisible. He seemed to be struggling against something. As he clenched his jaws shut, a cord stood out along his jaw, twitching its way toward his temple.
His eyes rolled upward, as though there were some deeply terrifying question that frightened him more the less he could make sense of it.
When he had been afraid of Chai Si, he had babbled nonstop; now his lips were tightly sealed, yet he seemed afraid of something new.
The next second, Chai Si understood the source of his fear.
The driver's head struck a grab pole. It was only a bump, but it seemed to knock loose the tension he had been maintaining.
He did not open his mouth, but a human voice came from between his closed lips again, much clearer than before. "In the car... the light... wire, broken, falling..."
Had Chai Si understood even a blink later, the wire swinging down from the ceiling might have sent electricity straight through his body-even realizing in time, he only barely dodged it at the last possible moment, crashing into a seat beside him as he watched a spray of crackling electrical sparks sweep across the floor in front of him, the sparks writhing into a snake.
Was this Phantasm protecting itself?
The thought suddenly flashed through Chai Si's mind.
The driver instinctively covered his head and curled up. The wire struck the floor without touching him, bounced up, then swung through the air again, heading straight for Chai Si.
The car was not spacious, and the spot where the panel had come loose and the wire had fallen was right in its center. One live, crackling, wildly bouncing wire was already difficult enough to deal with-but as Chai Si hurled his T-shaped baton, knocking the sparking end of the wire several paces back, he heard the voice coming from inside the driver's cheek again.
"Want to go home."
Only now, hearing it again, did he realize that voice sounded nothing like the subway driver. It spoke urgently, indistinctly. "Want to go home, Pathway, a Pathway people can take to the Nest-"
For an instant, Chai Si mistakenly thought the wire had struck him.
Every pore tingled. He actually dared not move, as though afraid of disturbing it, afraid it would not continue. The scar on the back of his right hand woke, tightening and tugging at his skin in waves.
Chai Si stood blankly in front of the seat, one hand still resting on its plastic back. Apart from the voice beneath the driver's cheek, the whole world seemed to have vanished from his awareness, receding into the distance. He was back in the dark, silent mountain forest of his childhood. The difference was that, in this darkness, he could see only a single star.
"...None," said the voice beneath the driver's cheek.
The wire leaped into the air again, a string of electrical sparks tracing an arc through the air and landing beside Chai Si's feet.
He heard his heart thud against the bones of his chest, unable to break free of its cage, slipping back into the depths of darkness.
In the dead silence, he realized he had taken a step forward, his legs stiff, his fingers clutching the clothes over the driver's chest. Yet that hand seemed very far away from him.
This meaningless body, too, seemed very far away.
"Resident."
As he hauled the driver upright, the man's feet unsteady beneath him, the voice came from his tightly shut mouth again. "A Pathway to the human world, there is, resident, one."
The driver's heavy breathing, the rush of air from the subway car's ventilation system, the crackling wire... As though a floodgate had opened, every sound and movement surged back into Chai Si's awareness together.
"Make it be quiet," Chai Si forced out through gritted teeth at the driver.
After those words, his peripheral vision told him that a pitch-black window ahead was bowing inward into the car, like a sheet of cloth being pushed up by something enormous.
Although saying this sounds like making excuses to ask for time off, yesterday, when I was dizzy with sleepiness, I really did get stuck at 1,500 characters and couldn't write another word no matter what. I just felt the plot had reached a dead end. I didn't know who had written those first 1,500 characters, or who I was supposed to hand the rest over to. Anyway, I couldn't do this job, because my brain was a wooden carving.
I didn't sleep well today either, I guess (cat meowing, up early for a meeting, not enough sleep), but at least I'd slept. Sitting down to write again was different. Hey, I actually had images and ideas. I actually finished it.
And after finishing, I was actually a little pleased with myself? Especially pleased with the part where Chai Si was bitterly disappointed (.
(End of chapter)
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