Chapter 36

[The following chapter contains strong language. Reader caution is advised.]

Saturday 17th April 1999

It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, and after days of deliberation, our search for answers had led us to arrange a meeting with Harmony. While we likely wouldn’t get anything useful from Melody, her twin sister could potentially know something of value.

Of course, we would have to tread carefully so as not to give the game away if Harmony really did know nothing…

Our elevator door opened up onto the fancy, sleek suite of the popular new café in town. A broad range of drinks and attractive oak furnishings were bolstered by a breath-taking view all around.

“And would you look at that, it’s busy as hell,” Zahid pointed out with at least two ounces of triumph to his voice. The buzz of visitors was abundant enough to speak for him – certainly enough to risk drowning out his voice – but he still felt the need to gloat.

“No one said it wouldn’t be,” Dakota countered coolly. “Only that it wouldn’t be a big deal.”

“Be my guest and find us a table, then.”

He waved a hand dismissively.

“Maybe Harmony already has one,” I reasoned while playing Where’s Wally with the crowd in the hopes of spotting her. Somehow, it took me no more than a few seconds to find her, sat on her own at a large table with six drinks. She waved at me cheerily.

“Hey, you were right! This is why you’re on the team,” Kendal giggled, giving me a firm pat on the back. Clearly, she’d located Harmony too.

We squeezed our way through the hustle and bustle, just about making our way to Harmony without difficulty.

“Hi guys!” she beamed at us as we reached her, that ever-present glow about her almost palpable. “I ordered your favourite drinks for you!”

“Fierce! You’re a gem,” Dakota smiled back brightly, taking the seat closest to Harmony while the rest of us found our own spots around the table. Our drinks were shared out, and I took a sip of my Coke.

“Sooo, you wanna talk Melody, right?” our guest speaker confirmed with us, swaying her head side-to-side lightly. “What d’you wanna know? Her favourite food? Her bedroom décor? Her shoe size?”

Why did that last one feel like it was directed at me…?

“Has she been behaving weirdly lately?”

Dakota tapped awkwardly on her coffee cup with two fingers to try and vent her nerves.

“We saw her in town last week and she seemed… off…”

“Off how?” Harmony asked with a curious pout.

“Off like Bao,” Zahid replied bluntly. “Check this out…”

He gestured to our friend, sat brooding over his drink.

“See how not like himself he is? He’s been like this for… a week now?”

“And I’ve said. It’s fine,” Bao grumbled almost to himself.

It didn’t seem like the fairest comparison to make, considering that Bao’s continued gloomy state was further removed from his usual self than Melody’s sudden scythe-wielding turn was from hers. Still, with our cards practically sewn into our chests, it was an easy way of getting our point across.

“Aaaah…” Harmony replied, losing herself in thought for a moment before returning to the present with such charm, you could almost hear a microwave ping.

“No idea. I haven’t seen her in two weeks.”

“What?” Kendal blurted.

“So I guess she has been off,” Melody’s sister concluded breezily.

“Do you know where she’s been?” I asked with no expectation that she would be able to provide an answer. Sure enough, she shook her head.

“She didn’t announce it or anything.”

“You don’t sound concerned,” Zahid noted accusingly.

“You’ve seen her around, so I know she’s safe. Not that I ever doubted it, anyway. Maybe it’s a twin thing, but I know she’s fine.”

She began typing on the keypad built into the table.

“No matter how off she is, I trust her. She’s the strongest person I know.”

With a final few key taps, the holographic projector in the centre of the table came to life, bringing up an image of a little seaside town that I had no hopes of identifying.

“When we were ten, we went on holiday here… it was so much fun. Sunny every day, a little zoo nearby, lots of activities… the best swimming pool I’ve ever seen… And on our last night there, Melody ran away. Let herself out while the rest of us were sleeping and disappeared. We spent the next day searching for her. And the whole time, I just knew she was safe.”

“Where was she…?” Dakota asked with visible concern.

“She’d made her way to the zoo and snuck in,” Harmony grinned. The image flickered and switched to show the zoo in question, rendered in 3D form. “Eventually someone noticed she was walking around on her own and handed her over to the staff. Took them a while but they managed to get the message to us. They wound up calling every resort in the area because they couldn’t get an answer out of her.”

Suddenly, her face switched to earnest confusion.

“That’s the only time she’s ever been in genuine trouble. Mum and Dad were furious with her, even though they were relieved she was okay. She told them she ran away because she wanted to stay there.”

“You say that like it wasn’t the reason…” I spoke up, thrown by her phrasing. I was probably only hitting on something she was about to clarify, but it sprung to my mind with such force that I couldn’t help but voice it.

“Astute!” she purred back. “She tells me things she doesn’t tell anyone else. She went to test things; see how she’d fare without the rest of us. Even her going to the zoo was to see how long she could manage and how she’d cope if someone tried to get her back to her family.”

“That sounds like a trial run at running away,” Zahid dismissed the explanation.

“Trial running away,” I added despite myself.

“My sister is smart, and capable, and I have so much faith in her,” Harmony insisted with a smile. “So thanks for your concern, but I’m sure she’s got everything under control.”

It seemed that was her conclusion. The rest of us looked between ourselves before all gazes settled on Dakota. We couldn’t tell Harmony the whole truth, but we had to say something to explain the situation.

Panic flashed briefly in Dakota’s eyes, but she quickly calmed herself and looked to Harmony again.

“The thing is…”

She was clearly mulling over her choice of words, lining everything up for the safest combination.

“She wasn’t behaving like we’d expect her to. And she’s cut her hair, too. If she has everything under control then-”

“Then she’s up to something,” Harmony nodded.

“Any idea what? Did she tell you anything?” Kendal leant in a little as if that alone would pry information from our interviewee.

“No, actually… There’s been nothing out of the ordinary until the day she didn’t come home.”

“Okay, I’ve got a question…”

Zahid glared sharply at Harmony. I almost felt cut by it myself.

“If she’s been missing for two weeks, why the hell hasn’t it been reported? Did your parents stop giving a shit somewhere between 1992 and now? You might have faith in her, but they-”

“They’re on holiday, Zahid!” she assured him bouncily. “I haven’t told them anything. Let’s face it, Melody will be back before they are!”

There was something in how casual she was about the whole thing that made it completely convincing. Of course this wasn’t a problem. Of course Melody would be back home in time for the new school term. Harmony’s sister was more than capable of handling herself, and her business was her own.

And if Harmony really did know anything, she was doing a brilliant job of dancing around it.

The holographic zoo image flickered away.

“I guess we won’t worry about it, then,” Dakota spoke. In other words, our investigation was over.

“Okay!” came Harmony’s chipper response, raising her drink high.

“Mhm…” Bao added quietly.

“Soooooo, have you guys been up to anything fun?”

… visiting the park two towns over counts as fun, right? It has lots of cool animal statues! Almost like a scientifically-accurate Crystal Palace garden!

“Y-Yeah!” I replied before anyone else could. “I guess!”

“Tell me all about it!” Harmony implored, putting her elbows up on the table either side of the keypad and resting her chin on her stacked hands.

Behind her, an uncanny white tear began to manifest, like a cut being made by an invisible knife. My eyes left Harmony, rising up to meet this new phenomenon, and my friends caught it too. Harmony was the last to turn, just in time to see her twin sister emerge through the tear in her new look, scythe and all.

“You’re all idiots,” she greeted us, and then lifted her mask up onto the top of her head. “The most remarkable, oblivious idiots.”

“Relax, sis!” Harmony sang nonchalantly. “I’ve got this.”

And with the fiercest look I’ve ever seen from her – the fiercest look I’ve ever seen from the fiercest person I know – Melody replied with ice cold words:

“Don’t. You are not my sister.”

What on Earth had Harmony done to cause a remark like that?

“Uhm… can someone explain what’s going on?” Kendal asked, looking from one sister to the other.

“And how did you tear through like that…?” I addressed Melody. “Surely you can only do that when it’s…”

Harmony was still sat there. But with how casually she was taking things, perhaps she really did know?

“When it’s a reality warp?”

“Alex, think,” she snapped back. “Our town doesn’t have a huge tower. It doesn’t have a flashy café.”

Her free hand pointed to the table next to us, where the oblivious patrons were browsing high heels on the holographic display.

“No place on Earth has holograms.”

She was right. Completely right. And somehow, we hadn’t noticed any of it.

“How come we didn’t know we were in a warp?” Bao pondered aloud.

“That’s on me!” Harmony chuckled. “I thought I’d have some fun.”

With that, the world around us shimmered and smeared, colours and sounds blurring together and transforming until something new came to be. We were now stood on the fringes of a club as music blared at ear-splitting volume, lights span and bounced, and clubbers revelled in the cacophony.

Me being me, I immediately felt uncomfortable in this new setting even as my mind raced with surprise and confusion. I noticed Harmony grinning at me.

I vaguely heard Melody say something, but it was smothered by the overwhelming beat that seemed to be quaking through my entire body. A moment later, a tidal wave of white enveloped everything, and for a brief moment I couldn’t see, or hear, a thing.

Just as quickly, reality burst back into vision. All too quickly, my senses were hit by the local park – our real meeting place – and everyone in the area being attacked by a menagerie of gruesome sci-fi monsters.

“This is reality. This is what you’ve been missing,” Melody told us matter-of-factly.

Eyes wide, I summoned my Lokon sword and blasted on my Painter gear within seconds. My friends reacted the exact same way.

“Don’t waste your time,” the new arrival continued before we could act. She rounded on her sister.

“Stop it now. Or I’ll make things extremely difficult for you.” Scythe raised for emphasis.

It took Harmony a moment to respond.

“Fiiiine… spoilsport…” she eventually relented.

She threw her hand out in disapproval, and every single monster in sight simply disappeared. The running, screaming citizens calmed down and began going about their business once more. Life kept on like nothing had happened.

“What just happened…?” Dakota asked on behalf of all five of us.

“Oh man. I’ve been looking forward to this moment and now it’s finally here!”

Harmony was literally jumping up and down in excitement. Spontaneous, unbridled excitement.

“You know Lokonessence?”

“You know Lokonessence…?” Kendal bounced the question back.

“I am Lokonessence!”

She threw her arms wide, and grinned wider.

“Ta-da!”

I can’t speak for the others’ silence, but I spent the following few seconds trying to figure out what the hell she meant.

“Surprised?”

“Start explaining,” Zahid growled at her. “What the fuck do you mean?”

“I mean what I said,” Harmony twinkled. “I’m Lokonessence. ‘Preternatural force of creation’. I’m the power in your weapons and the clothes on your bodies.”

“You’re a human…” I insisted, looking her up and down to try and see any evidence to the contrary.

“Why do you think it’d be difficult for me to make myself look human?” she asked me; as she did, her body disintegrated into a flowing wave of rainbow colours, with only her head remaining intact.

“This is crazy…” Bao uttered, almost dismayed.

“Everything you’ve dealt with already and this is what throws you?” Melody asked.

“What’s your deal, anyway?!” Zahid snapped at her. “Are you fake too?”

“I’m real. 100%,” she told him.

“There was a real Harmony…” I said aloud as I realised. That’s why Melody had spoken to this Harmony the way she had.

“Yep!” the imposter cheered at that. “She died eleven years ago. Almost to the day, actually! But then I came, straight from Nick’s bunker.”

Her head disappeared into the cloud of colour, which zoomed around the five of us and reformed into Harmony Hill in our midst.

“See, he didn’t just bind me to the weapons,” she continued. “He’d managed to aggregate my totality inside an orb. All technology other people had developed, of course. I’d never been trapped quite like that. And then Neil and his team showed up, and blew the orb open! Buuuut… I was still bound to the weapons, that hadn’t changed.”

I looked down at my sword. That blue glow inside… that was part of her. Part of Harmony. That power, and that girl, were one and the same.

“It’s funny, though. I’ve existed since the dawn of forever, but I’d never… never been tied to the world like this. And even outside the orb, I could feel it. So I sought out more, and I reached out and found…”

She turned to Melody, listening to the story with a grim expression.

“Harmony got knocked down that morning,” Melody picked up the story. “There was nothing the doctors could do for her. My twin sister died in a hospital bed and I lost her forever.”

For what felt like the first time, I could see deep pain in Melody, expression like I’d never quite seen from her.

“And then she greeted me,” she gestured at the Lokonessence being. “She offered to bring Harmony back to life… I just had to let her in. So, like the grieving fool I was, I accepted. And it was like Harmony had never died. But she had. It took me longer than I’d like to admit, but I realised how much I’d screwed up.”

“I’m here, though,” the mock Harmony told her softly. “I’ve been your sister longer than the original ever was.”

“That’s not the same,” Dakota interrupted venomously.

“Exactly,” Melody muttered. “My sister is dead and no one even knows it but me. And still, I agreed to Lokonessence’s games.”

“Mhm!”

The Lokon-girl turned her attention to us again.

“See… being tied to the Lokon weapons… it’s like being a bird with its wings clipped, and its legs broken, and its beak crushed, all bound in chains of steel. I’m not free. Not truly free. But this is fun in its own way, because I’ve discovered just how incredible being alive is. And you’re the fruit of my labours.”

“Meaning what…?” Zahid asked, somehow more subdued than he was mere moments ago.

“Meaning we chose you,” Melody answered. “We sent the weapons to the four of you.”

That made sense now that we knew what Harmony really was, but even then… knowing, and realising that the truth had been hiding in plain sight all along, was almost gut-wrenching.

“Aww, look at your faces!” Harmony squealed in amused joy. “I kept an eye on Dakota all the time, since Saoirse took the spear with her-”

“Stop saying my family’s names like you know them!” Dakota snarled.

“But I do! They saved me! And I’m so fortunate that Neil decided to hide the rest of them here. I went and dug them out last summer so we could set things in motion.”

“Why?” Bao asked. “Why did you give us the weapons?”

“You’re not going to like the answer…” Melody forewarned him… no, all of us.

“So we could have some fun!”

Harmony pirouetted on the spot, her clothing shimmering a thousand colours and taking on a thousand shapes.

“Harmony…” I began, and waited for her to stop revolving and face me. “You haven’t said anything about… any kind of force or power or race of creatures that are out to get you, or the weapons. And I’ve got this disgusting feeling that I know why, so please, please tell me anything else.”

“But you’re right,” she replied, tip-toeing over to me. “I know exactly what you’re thinking, and you’re so fantastically right. I made the monsters. Every last one of them.”

She was smiling, so proud of herself, so pleased with everything.

“And you know what else?”

A giggle escaped her mouth.

“I made them all from the five of you.”

My whole world caved in on me.

“I don’t understand…” Kendal remarked. “They’re nothing to do with us. They attack us, sometimes they attack other people…! We’re the ones who have to fight them!”

“Yeah, for fun!”

“You did… all of that…?” Dakota started, but never finished her sentence for how much she was fuming.

“You won every time, didn’t you?” Harmony pointed out. “I just plucked things from your heads and spun them into enemies!”

“The paperheroes…”

Bao let out a shaky breath, reeling.

“They were superheroes I made when I was a kid… I completely forgot…”

“How did you get inside our heads?” Zahid pressed further.

“I bound myself to the five of you, duh. How do you think I knew all your favourite drinks?”

“Tell them properly,” Melody warned her.

“Oookaaaay…” Harmony replied in agitation. “Listen up. Other than Dakota, we hand-picked you from everyone in the school. All five of you fit the criteria I need to really bond with someone. To put it scientifically… you all have abnormal brain chemistry.”

“No…” I whimpered, taking a step back for good measure. I couldn’t accept that diagnosis, couldn’t take what it meant.

“It’s true! We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”

“What do you even mean?” Kendal asked, causing Harmony to turn to her.

“Well, like you… Like how you honestly agree that this has been fun. You crave new and exciting things until you exhaust them, and then you seek something even bigger. And I get that! You’d put your life on the line for an adrenaline high, Kendal, and if you ask me that’s beautiful. But it’s not what normal people do.”

She looked to Zahid.

“You know what’s wrong with you, Zahid. Every once in a while, you explode. That heart-racing rush of fury. It’s fantastic; it’s an honour to be there with you when you go through it. And you hate yourself for it, and for how you can’t control it, for how you drive people away with it. You know it isn’t right and you just can’t help it.”

“Fuck you,” he spat back in pain as she turned to Bao.

“Bao. The world is your oyster. Your brain reaches this way and that to soak up everything you can and it races around at lightspeed. You carry so much in there, building up connections and diving deep into whatever takes your fancy, and then the next thing, and the next, until you crash. I’m sorry you’ve crashed, but you’ll feel better soon, and then you can do it all over again. Photography, Tamagotchi, anything and everything you could ever want.”

It was me or Dakota next, and she chose Dakota. I wanted to leap to my girlfriend’s defence before she even started, but it wasn’t my place.

“You have suffered like no normal person ever does, Dakota. You’ve lost so profoundly that you still haven’t healed, and you strive to be the person everyone expects you to be even thought it’s so hard for you. Even letting in your new friends was terrifying, and you were so scared when Bao got shot because you’re still not sure if having these connections is worth the pain of losing them.”

And, finally, she turned to me.

“Don’t…” I pleaded in stupid vain.

“You feel things on a level beyond what most people do. When you’re happy, everything is spectacular. When you’re sad, you feel like dying. When you’re angry, you could raze the world to the ground. Everything is in extremis for you, Alex. Everything is black or white. People are perfect until they do something wrong. And you’re lucky, because there are those like you who have it worse; you just redirect everything back at yourself. You’re the monster, no one else. But fuck them. But fuck yourself.”

“Shut up…”

My eyes stung, my grip tightened on the sword. She had articulated the very essence of myself, spelt it all out and underlined how fucking stupid and wrong it was.

“I love you. I love you all,” she concluded. “I love how wrong you all are, and I’m here with you every second of every day. So let’s keep fighting the good fight!”

“It’s not a fight worth having,” Dakota told her. “Just stop. Stop making monsters, stop using us.”

“Nah, I’m gonna keep on. And if you refuse to fight back, I’ll have the monsters attack everyone else and force your hand. You’re my beautiful Painters and I want you all to keep impressing me.”

She dispersed again, snaking through the air as a stream of colour and restoring her human form next to Melody.

“I don’t know what you have planned,” she whispered, “and I don’t know how that weapon of yours works. But if you’ve decided to be my enemy, I’ll give you hell, sister.”

And with that, the entity calling itself Harmony Hill fell apart and disappeared.

Melody took a moment to compose herself before stepping forwards.

“I tried to warn you.”

“Don’t you fucking dare!” I yelled. “You barely said anything! Why would we take your word out of the blue?!”

“That’s on you,” she shrugged. “I can’t tell you yet what I’m going to do, but understand this: if you stay on her side, we’ll be enemies.”

Tapping the emblem port of her scythe, she dispelled her costume and returned to casual clothes. Without a goodbye, she headed off down the street.

And that left the five of us, Lokonessence’s toy soldiers, standing unnoticed in our Painter gear without the faintest idea on what to do. The curtain had been pulled back and revealed us for what we really were.