A Normil Day

Rick Normil

I collapsed onto the floor of my apartment, breathing hard and shaking.

Jesus. Jesus fucking God. That was—Armand was—I was—

Sigil. The scariest Extraordinary in the entire world. Nobody knows if he's even human; most people think not. God exists—not the sweet, self-sacrificing God we pray to most of the time, but the voice from the whirlwind—and nobody, but nobody, knows what the hell he wants. One time, he interfered in a war and there were fighter jets close enough to actually shoot missiles at him. They vanished. Not just the missiles, the jets. And the pilots' parachutes. The pilots themselves were left in mid-air, with nothing.

They weren't even hurt when they hit the ground. They just stopped, not a hair out of place. But he deliberately let them fall, shrieking, shitting themselves, dead sure they were going to die on impact. Not one of them could get back in the cockpit afterwards.

And, I realized now, he'd meant it that way. The point was to end the war. And Sigil, every time he manifests, exists for only three minutes. He has to be like that—he has to be overwhelming—because he can't stick around and follow through on his threats.

Besides, I'd seen inside Armand, during the fusion. The details were fading, but the essence remained. Armand wasn't remotely sane, and I'm not sure he would have been even if he hadn't—Jesus—been stuck in limbo since nineteen eighty-three. He was a fanatic. Every single part of his being was concentrated, laser-like, on one goal. Oh, in his normal state, he had doubts and fears and guilt, but Sigil? Sigil was created from his sheer, concentrated purpose, and it was—he was—

Let me put it this way. There is one thing, only one, standing between the Earth and utter destruction: what Armand's fanatic about. Which is people. Saving people. Helping people. Making them safe to live their lives and make their mistakes and go on vacation and fight and love.

Believe me, that fact doesn't make him any less terrifying. The scariest thing about Sigil is that he's ten times more frightening from the inside.

Or maybe the scariest thing was that I still sort of liked Armand.

Of course, part of that was knowing exactly how much I—Sigil—had been bluffing. Neither of us were going to torture Guardian's body. Neither of us could, even if Sigil didn't have that time limit. We didn't have it in us. And we didn't entirely expect the bodyjacker to cooperate. The entire performance, all that power, had been a stalling tactic. To give me time to find a solution.

So. Time to stop meebling in a corner and get to work. I took out my cellphone and called Jenna.

At around three in the afternoon, I met Jenna at a café near her apartment. I decided to call the place Le Pretentioux, and ordered something that, for all the lengthy description, added up to more or less a melty cheese sandwich. And coffee. Gotta have coffee.

Jenna joined me a moment after I got my food and passed me a new key. "Robb's apartment," she said, without preamble.

"Slick."

She waved away the praise. "The landlady was a pushover. I could have done the wax imprint in plain sight and not tipped her off."

Yeah, fun fact. Jenna Germaine has a number of skills that don't completely fit with the whole middle-class college graduate thing she's got going.

"I'll go there as soon as I finish this," I said, gesturing with my sandwich. "Thanks for the assist. I'm not sure what I would have done if you didn't believe me."

"Yes, well." Jenna looked vaguely uncomfortable. "It's not just you. I watched that—can't really call it a fight—I watched Guardian face off against Sigil, through binoculars. And Guardian wasn't moving right."