Chapter One

The Storm

“Please don’t do this, Isaac.”

Anthony’s voice crackled through the phone from the bad reception in the desert. The gale force winds from the tornado didn’t help the signal strength either. Isaac’s knuckles whitened around the steering wheel as he wrenched the car around yet another roadblock.

“I’ve got to, Anthony. It’s my brother this time, not some faceless profile. I won’t ignore this anymore.”

“You don’t understand, not one person has ever returned. They’ve sent close to a hundred people and every single one is still unaccounted for. They don’t want to admit it, but I know. Finn is gone, Isaac.”

The road stretched out in a straight line in front of Isaac, splitting the giant swathes of desert on either side in two. A tornado swirled on the road where the ground met the horizon. Lightning scattered across the sky every other heartbeat.

“Do you get what I’m saying, Isaac? No one comes back from this, not even you!”

Isaac slammed the gas pedal to the floor. The tornado churned straight ahead. There was no going back now. The noise of the engine and the cacophony of wind and thunder almost drowned out the speakers on the phone, but he could still make out Anthony’s shrill voice beneath it all.

“You should be thankful I went to you and not the IC guys, you would’ve been in Guantanamo by now if I had.”

Isaac only had eyes for the tornado. “Finn’s on the other side, I just know it.”

A couple seconds passed before Anthony spoke again. “Isaac, I’m worried for you. You haven’t been yourself lately, you’ve cut everyone off. Even your family… Did you know your secretary’s been calling me every day for the past week? I don’t even know how she got my number, much less my name… who have you been telling about the storms?”

“How would you know how I’ve been doing? They sent you to spy on me as well? I thought better of you, Anthony, I really did.”

“I came to you! I haven’t told anyone about this, I swear, none of my bosses know.”

Isaac continued as if Anthony hadn’t spoken. “What, spying on the recruits we sent into the storms to die wasn’t good enough for you, Anthony? You had to add one more?”

“If the recruits we sent all died then your brother is dead as well!”

“That’s not true.” Isaac pressed the phone against his ear until it hurt.

“Finn is dead, Isaac. You’ll never see your brother again, you have to accept that!”

“Accept what? I don’t have to accept shit, Anthony. Fuck you!” He threw the phone so hard against the windscreen it cracked into a spider web of jagged lines that completely blocked the view out of the car.

Isaac cursed and stomped on the brakes. The car lurched to a stop and Isaac pushed down on the door handle. The moment it opened, the car door wrenched off into the wind, flying towards the tornado.

A whirlwind of papers, books and garbage exploded out of his car as every item he had hoarded for the past several months lifted up on the wind that came in through the now gaping hole in his car.

Isaac looked down in shock and for a brief second it looked as if some of the papers were passing through his midsection as if he was a ghost. A notebook smacked him in the face and he swiped it aside. By the time he had wrestled it away every last thing not bolted down in his car had gone with the wind.

Isaac held onto the notebook as it yearned to join its brethren on their journey. Several circled notes were scribbled on it. One note read “Patterns inconclusive”, another read “Chronological fuckery” and yet another read “Find the storm!” The last note had been circled more times than the others, each circle in a different ink than the last.

It was just his own research, not the documents he had stolen from Anthony and the government. Not that it mattered now anyways: Here he was, the storm right in front of him. He decided to let go of the notebook but even before he could do so, it slipped between his fingers as if through water.

Isaac stepped out of the car and watched it fly. No, he had let go of it, that was it. Physical objects couldn’t flow like water.

The light from the headlamps of his car flickered and he turned in time to see his car lift up in the air, lurch around and head straight for him. He had no time nor instinct for what to do besides gape his mouth open in astonishment. The car flew, but not him?

The car crashed into him. He closed his eyes at the last second and didn’t see anything but he could still hear the scraping of metal even over the wind as the suspension failed and the undercarriage of the car was dragged across the asphalt. Despite the gut wrenching sounds he felt nothing.

He opened his eyes and turned to see the car sail away as if it hadn’t a worry left in the world now that it too was free of Isaac.

Sand and dust moved in around the car and soon everything was veiled by a thick grey. Everything grew darker and darker. The noise rose to a deafening crescendo. The wind seemed to affect him little but every now and then some small grain pelted him across bare skin and he raised his arm to shield his face.

Isaac started walking. First a tentative step, then several more until he got a good gait going. He’d be damned if he was to be caught lying down. His eardrums popped. The lashings of the wind grew more and more frequent. He felt like a reef at sea. The noise rose to nigh unbearable levels. Just as he thought he could take it no more, as he prepared to lay down and curl up into a ball, everything stilled.

Silence.

Isaac brought his hand away from his face and looked up. The tornado had gone. The sky was clear, still close to sundown, but no clouds covered the sky any longer. He stood in a clearing amidst an insane amount of rubble, garbage and a staggering variety of items. The place looked like a sort of scrapyard for discarded construction materials.

He was surrounded by several people, one young looking girl and the rest men. The men were clad in rough cloth with leather reinforcement and they looked as if they had slept in those clothes for weeks. They had a ridiculous amount of knives and scabbards on them, strapped to every limb, belt and loop on their clothing. Most disconcerting though, was the man standing furthest away from Isaac; he had not just two bulging arms, with shoulders larger than Isaac’s head, but an extra set of arms right below his first set. Four arms?

The girl standing across from him inside the circle the men were forming around them also had her own set of oddities. She was clothed in a black cloak, hiding most of her from view. But of what he could see of her arms and face wherever her skin showed, long black feathers sprouted from it. Even from her face she grew feathers. Isaac found it difficult to hold the gaze she leveled at him. He got the distinct impression that she was weighing him.

On some level his plan had succeeded. It dawned on him, however, how little thought he had given to his plans should he actually survive a storm and follow Finn, whatever had happened to him. The things he had just experienced bent his view of reality to the extreme. Instead of admitting what those extra arms meant for his world view, not to mention human skin that could grow feathers, he gathered his surroundings.

Looking around didn’t help though. The whole place looked as if a tornado like the one that had brought him here had come through a couple decades ago and then the cleanup had been continuously postponed ever since. Large sections of buildings appeared to have been just dropped off at random, and dropped from a height at that, as most of them had large cracks running all the way from the foundations to the roofs. Splinters and whole panels were missing where wood and other kinds of building materials had been used.

And there was a lot of it, building materials that is, because it covered the streets and leaned against every wall. Concrete slabs, huge stones, piles of gravel and bricks lay strewn about haphazardly. There was no unifying trend of architecture to bind the buildings still standing together either. One could find anything from victorian era europe to modern 21st century buildings. Where there were road signs or shopfronts you’d be hard pressed to find more than one out of ten you could read or make any sense of. Odd combinations of items covered the streets and surfaces, roofs and balconies, as if an antiquity shop had decided to shoot their stock up into space as some sort of elaborate practical joke only for it to fall short and rain down over an unsuspecting scrapyard instead.

Tribal spears lay resting up against grandfather clocks with astronaut helmets for hats. Half of a train station ticket counter with Korean writing on the signs sat propped up next to a portcullis which must have belonged to some medieval-style castle. There were no signs of where the rest of the castle, or the train station for that matter, had gone off to. Everything seemed out of place. The only cohesive element to the chaos was the general overgrowth of plants and vines that covered everything but a few items or buildings. These undisturbed items usually lay at the top of their respective piles.

“What’s this?” one of the men said. He was squat and scarred. He had no knives like the other men, instead he had a silver key hanging from thick threads wrapped around his right hand. Isaac couldn’t figure out what the key represented, the man treated it with the same importance and reverence one would give a religious symbol. Things were turning stranger every second. He was no beauty either, he looked like someone who had survived an accident with a wood chipper. Even his demeanor seemed chipped and fragmented, as if he’d never quite managed to master social interaction.

“Aster!” he shouted and the girl flinched. She’d been staring at Isaac like he was a puzzle. “Who is this?” the man repeated, but he received no answer. His face grew angry and he held out the silver key as if it was a weapon. It looked like he entered into a battle stance. The pose reminded Isaac of a martial arts exhibition he’d seen once. “No more tricks, Aster, I tell Tejahl.” The man sounded like a heavy metal singer.

Aster scowled back. “How would I know?” she said. “He’s wound up here the same way as everyone else,” she paused to tilt her head, “or are you suggesting I can somehow predict the storms?” she looked at him with revulsion. Her tone sounded rhetorical to Isaac but the man shifted and his stance stiffened like a coiled spring as if that’s exactly what he thought Aster capable off.

Her voice softened. “Ronan,” she looked at him as if he was a child. “Do you really think I would struggle to meet Tejahl’s quota if I could predict even one storm out of a hundred?” Ronan looked uncertain now, not quite as battle hardened. “Do you?” she pressed. His arm lowered a fraction and Aster smiled. “At least think a bit before you open up that trashcan of a mouth you have.” Ronan sneered at her and his arm straightened again. Aster smirked.

A loud roar sounded far off in the distance. Birds scattered from the roofs and towers where it echoed. Isaac closed his mouth as if that could make the roar stop. Aster, who had seemed about to say something, froze along with Ronan and his men. They all stood poised towards the east where the sound carried through the air and fleeing birds.

Isaac’s brow furrowed as he listened. The roar stopped. For a moment not one sound could be heard. The contrast was eerie. He felt his ears tingle as they perked up. Every sound magnified. The wind brushed against his ears as if he was speeding down a hill on a bike. For every breath he could almost feel the fabric of his coat slide across his shirt.

Isaac noticed someone whispering, by that building over there, right behind the wall. No, more than one, several people, whispering, calling out to him. Their voices were too low, a hair’s breadth away from being audible. Isaac craned his neck towards the sounds. He could just about make out a word here or there, but it didn’t sound anything like English.

A bird squawked and Isaac jumped. His face reddened. What, I’m scared of birds now? The feathers running along Aster’s skin must’ve unnerved him more than he’d thought. The whispers were gone. What was up with that? This place felt like a dream, or a nightmare. Isaac’s mind raced. How had he heard people whispering behind a wall from all the way over to where he stood? Chills ran up and down his back. Isaac’s intuition screamed at him to run, something was very wrong.

“Hey, people, maybe we should mov…” Isaac turned around but found Aster had moved up close to him without him noticing. She shoved him hard with both hands. There was a surprising amount of strength in her arms. Isaac teetered backwards off-balance and stumbled into Ronan. Something hard cracked against the back of his head. Ronan grunted. Isaac’s eyes flashed white and stars blinked on and off against his retina like LED lamps in a computer.

Aster erupted in an explosion of feathers that shot out like arrows in all directions. Grunts and screams echoed. Isaac saw the four-armed guy across from him bellow as he clutched his eye, a feather sticking out between his fingers. Among Isaac’s periphery his brain registered streaks of red. Isaac knew that meant something important but his brain struggled to keep up and failed to provide him the exact details.

A large boulder burst out from left field and hit the ground with what could only be described as a splash of dirt as it poured out from the impact like liquified. But the girl was not there to be crushed by it, she was high up in the air, defying physics by refusing to come down. The boulder continued on its trajectory for several meters before coming to a stop, leaving behind a deep groove in the earth. The four armed guy let out a roar of his own and large spikes of metal just grew out from the very skin of his palms. Isaac’s stomach made some tumbles, but the four armed guy seemed unconcerned with common courtesy for public displays of bodily functions and simply snapped the spikes off. He hefted one spike in each hand, drew back and threw.

Isaac groaned. Fourarms must’ve not gotten the memo on birds and their more common behaviors because he threw his spikes aimed at the last known birdgirl location, which was also coincidentally aimed right at Isaac. Isaac tried to scoot lower but didn’t get far as his body refused to commit to any amount of strenuous labour at this current point in time. Isaac winced for impact but as he did so the spikes hit something in the air and fell down, skewering ground instead of detective. Ronan shouted out something in a foreign language. Isaac could not see what the spikes had hit, as far as he could determine there’d been nothing there at all, just air.

A second volley of feathered arrows shot down from above, more concentrated, and a second wave of groans and meaty thuds followed, though not nearly as many as before. The four armed guy became a minced meat version of a porcupine. Isaac closed his eyes. What is she putting in those feathers? He thought. They just went right through people like needles. Ronan cursed, or at least it sounded something like a curse, Isaac couldn’t tell for sure.

Isaac looked up but regretted doing so as he saw still more feathers raining down towards him. Isaac had always thought it would be better to die without realizing beforehand, he had never enjoyed the thought of facing the abyss head on. Maybe that was why he’d failed to kill himself. The thought came unbidden and Isaac chased it away by reflex. What did it matter, he would die in this strange place anyways. He would never see Finn again. Isaac had failed his brother, their parents and, perhaps most of all, he had failed himself.

Isaac looked on and felt his ability to care slip away, but the feathered arrows froze yet again. They hit nothing in their path but stopped nonetheless. The feathers lost all their momentum at the same time, then slowly spiraled down in a sort of whimsical dance before they picked up speed again. Isaac cried out and brought his arm up. Searing hot pain laced through his body from his arm. The dull thump of arrows hitting dirt sounded all around him. Isaac grunted and brought his arm down. Three feathers stuck out from his forearm, blood dribbled from his sleeve.

Isaac hefted one feather in his hand, sucked in some air, bit down on his teeth, and drew the feather out with a sudden motion. The feather felt heavy in his hand. The girl dropped down from her bombing run behind what remained of fourarms. Growing curious, Isaac thumbed at the tip to brush his blood away. Something silver glimmered between the specks of blood.

His arm forgotten, Isaac brought the tip to his mouth and drew the blood away with his lips. He held it up again against the dimming sky and the metal tip gleamed in the fading light. That strange feathered girl could somehow grow metal tipped feathers out of her body on command, in seconds, and throw them at people like darts.

Aster spoke, “having fun?” Her voice was sharp and rough, drenched in glee.

“You will die, Aster!” Ronan said. Ronan clenched his fist, but still held his other stretched out, palm spread, his silver key hanging from the thick strings tightly wound around his hand. He stood balanced, as if about to take off in every direction at a moments notice. A feather stuck out from his shoulder but he ignored it.

Isaac looked around. Only half of the people in the circle surrounding them were still standing. When had that happened? The girl had fought them all alone, and won, not only that but it had barely been a contest, it had been just one step away from a slaughter.

Aster faced Ronan, looking him over with discerning eyes. “Tell the bitch I will have the keys, I just need more time,” she said. Isaac looked to Ronan. He stood poised for action, he reminded Isaac of a cornered animal, it seemed Aster had the upper hand. If that was so, why didn’t she go ahead and kill him?

“No time!” Ronan shouted, his face rigid and impassive, but a slight scowl and the red color to his skin betrayed him. “No more time! No more nothing!” Ronan’s voice rose in volume and distortion until he was screaming. “You give us keys, NOW!”

Aster ignored him. She turned to Isaac. “Thanks for your help, newcomer.”

“My name is Isaac.” He cringed inside even before he said it. She had startled him. That was all there was to it.

Aster chuckled. “Yeah, I don’t care.”

A shockwave burst from underneath her feet and she flew high up in the air and landed atop a pillar farther away from the harangued group. “Give the bitch my love, and don’t follow Ronan, or I will pick your crew off one by one while you’re not there to stop me.” She smiled, batted her eyes a few times and jumped onto the next tall rubble within her reach.

Isaac felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. He called out to Aster. “Hey! Wait! Hold on a second!” He didn’t really know whether it was the right move, just about next to nothing made any sliver of sense in this godforsaken place. But something in his intuition told him this was the right choice.

Aster hesitated for a brief moment. Isaac saw his chance and took it. “Hey! You can’t leave me here with these guys. I mean look at them!” He waved, indicating Ronan and his gang. He adopted an empathetic tone. “Listen, I’m new here, I haven’t got the faintest clue what is going on! Help me.” His forehead wrinkled and he looked up at her with pleading eyes. “I helped you, remember?” Isaac’s voice died down as a frightening expression fell over Asters face. She looked at him as if he was a pile of manure she’d stepped on by accident.

Isaac found it hard to face her stare. Was he really pleading with a murderer for help? How had he thought this would work? “Alright,” she said, “I’ll help you. I’ll teach you your first lesson.” She turned her back on him. “Welcome to the Endpoint, Isaac.” She jumped, once, twice, three times from the column to a garbage heap to a building. Then she ducked down, jumped over an edge and vanished.

Book One

The Tower Of Tejahl

Chapter One

The Storm

"Isaac"