“That,” he said. That was digital footage from four cameras, taking up half of the screen, two by two. I’d installed the cameras to cover all aspects of the workout room and its two entrances. The screens showed footage that had been aligned by time stamp to show the moment the creature entered the gym in a flash of light. Instantly, all the cameras had splotches of white-out and partial white-out, in the blocky shapes of ruined digital feed.
Angel said, “I’m piecing together sections of footage that are still okay, so we can get a view of the fight. This is all I got at this time.”
A fifth screen appeared on the far right of the TV and showed the creature entering the room. It was a blister of light, a halo of nothingness with glistening movement to the side that could have been wings, followed by a smoky cloud of out-of-focus, thrashing tail. The camera angle changed, and changed again as it flew across the room. It whipped to Gee and bit him.
“It went straight to Gee,” I said. “I thought it was angling for Leo and got Gee instead. But it targeted Gee DiMercy first. Anybody have any ideas about that?” No one answered, but I could feel a growing discomfort in the room as the snake thing attacked Leo, fought, and finally flew away, then did it again, and again, as Angel replayed the footage. The uneasiness might have been the result of the appearance of what would have passed for a dragon in mythology, or maybe the part where Bruiser and I both vanished from the screen into a haze of gray energies, but whatever caused it, the humans in the room were not happy campers. Fortunately, no footage appeared showing me in half-cat form, and though it was strange that no one brought that up, I decided not to mention it. Discretion being the better part of valor, or I am a scaredy cat, or something like that.
We watched the footage several more times before I said, “Okay. Stop. Is it just me or does anyone else get a different impression of the action from what we saw in the room at the time it happened?”
“I thought my eyes were going bad,” a voice said from the front of the room.
“Nothing I see now is what I saw at the time,” Bruiser agreed. His voice wasn’t worried, but it was far more bland than usual, which was telling in its own way.
“Me neither. That’s not what I saw,” another voice said. Others murmured what they had seen.
“I saw a buncha bats. Nearly crapped my pants.”
“I saw bees, dude. Killer bees. Heard ’em too. Scared the shi— Ooof. Whadju do that for?”
“No cussing around Janie,” Angel Tit said, making it sound like a law.
“I just got dizzy, like someone spiked my drink.”
“I started itching. I got outta there.” Others agreed. The spectators to the sparring had cleared the room fast. Few witnesses had been left to see my partial shift. “Interesting,” I said, feeling a weight lift off of me. “So it makes humans forget they ever saw it. Pretty good survival mechanism. Everyone write up a report and send it to my e-mail.”
There were groans from around the room, the soldier’s universal hatred of after-action reports. Beside me, Bruiser chuckled under his breath. I said, “We need to know if it’s messing with our minds, our eyesight, or our memories.” That shut them up. No one human liked to think their minds might be an open book to some supernat.
I said, “I want to know what everyone saw at the time, versus what we just saw on the footage. Keep the reports brief and get them to me by nightfall. Angel, see if you can sharpen the images or fix the interference or whatever you call the blocky white-out sections. Send it to me ASAP.”
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that. Nice work with the tech lingo, Legs,” he said with unrestrained sarcasm. The men laughed, and some of the tension that had been generated by the meeting dissipated. “Just kiddin’, Janie. I’ll let you know what I find and send the Kid a copy.”