I sighed. Despite the confusion, this was still my bed, my personal purgatory. I lay down beside my absentee husband and closed my eyes.
Hours later I rose and left my chamber, making a show of stretching, yawning, and running my fingers through my hair as I tied it back. The hallway cameras tracked my progress toward the main living area, where most of the others were gathered. For the last month, we had been keeping irregular hours, gathering in the early morning before some of us went back to our rooms, so that the guards would not expect any particular behaviour from us. Blanche sat on a sofa, reading. I joined her and picked up a book, pretending to flip through it. The clock on the wall read seven a.m. The lab men would be arriving with the new guards an hour from now. The current shift was tired from keeping vigil through the night. Our captors were at their weakest.
I looked around the room. Despite the Court’s slouching body language, all eyes focused on me. I nodded at Arthur. He nodded back, removed a shoelace from his pocket, and slipped it around his neck. His ruby, dangling from the string, winked in the artificial light, and then Arthur disappeared.
I counted to five before Arthur reappeared. “All clear?” I asked. He nodded and I stood. His strong arm circled me and in a flash the lab’s steel tables and stools replaced the living room.
“Here,” Arthur said, gesturing to a large metal safe next to us. I didn’t have my heart stone, but I wouldn’t need it. Arthur stood behind me, projecting the Dreamscape onto me. We’d practiced this and other things on missions we finished early. I placed my hand over the keypad and willed it to unlock. Bolts slid back, and I pulled the safe’s door open. Inside sat numerous black cases, each labelled with a chessboard position. I didn’t need to read the labels to find mine – I simply held out my hand and felt it calling to me. Good. That would make this easier.
I snapped open the case and slipped the pendant around my neck. Arthur and I pulled out other heart stones, throwing the necklaces into the case that had held mine. Once it was full I thrust it at Arthur. “Go,” I told him.
“Don’t move,” he replied, and then he teleported. I turned back to the safe. On a lower shelf sat a number of computer hard drives containing everything the scientists knew about us. I grabbed an armful and deposited them on a nearby metal table. I took a drive from the top and began smashing it into the pile. Plastic bits flew as I annihilated them. Then the lights went out, replaced almost immediately by the orange glow of emergency lights.
Arthur reappeared at my side. “Timothy cut the power. He’s staying there to make sure the EM field stays down. The knights are evacuating everyone to the rendezvous point. But we have a problem. I didn’t have either king’s heart stone.” He swung the safe’s door wider and began searching the lower shelves.
“You won’t find them there.” On the far side of the room a group of people stood just inside the door. Monroe glared at me, one hand gripping Blanche’s arm, the other holding a stun gun to her temple. Behind him stood Anders and two soldiers, aiming rifles at us.
“The children are gone!” Blanche cried. “Mark got me to the nursery, but it was full of soldiers! They shot him and took his heart stone. He won’t be able to heal himself. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive.”
“We moved the pawns a month ago,” Monroe taunted. “Couldn’t risk losing our leverage. Now stand down. One queen’s plenty, and I know Anders is dying to resume his experiments.”
“Get out, both of you,” Blanche sobbed.
“I’m not leaving you here,” I hissed.
The next moment, the overhead lights came on. Monroe tsked. “Should have done like Whitey told you.” He yanked Blanche’s arm and pulled her closer. “Now you’re trapped again. You can bounce around the building for a bit, but you can’t get out. So stand down.”
Blanche hunched her shoulders in defeat, but I saw the determination in her eyes and the knife in her free hand. I reached my hand out to Arthur, standing behind me. He clasped it and squeezed once.
The next moment I was almost touching Monroe. Before he could move I grabbed the hand with the gun and twisted the weapon free. As the bones in his wrist snapped, Blanche whirled away from him and slashed the thigh of the soldier behind her. To my right, Arthur did the same to the other soldier. Their femoral arteries slashed, both men were easily overpowered.
I grabbed the stun gun and jabbed Monroe with it. He screamed for the full five seconds I applied current, then collapsed in a sobbing heap that smelled of urine and sweat.
“Where are they? The children. Where are they?” I demanded.
“Go to hell,” he replied. I applied the current again.
“He doesn’t know.” The cool, detached voice came from the other side of the lab, where another door led to the other hallway. Partridge.
“Did you really think you could escape? That you were smarter than me? I was playing chess for decades before little Alice was even born. You will lay down your weapons and surrender your heart stones. And then you will beg my forgiveness.”
“You don’t have all of us,” I said.
“Oh yes, your associates outside the walls. They were meeting at the gas station five kilometres west of here, correct?”
A cold horror gripped my heart. We had never discussed the plans inside the building. The bishops, our planners, had been quite clear: no word was to pass our lips inside, where we could be overheard. So how could Partridge know the rendezvous location?
The next moment I had my answer. A red-headed figure stepped out from behind Partridge. No one held a gun to his head.
“Timothy?” Arthur asked. “You were supposed to be guarding the generator! Now we’re trapped!”
The Red King’s bishop shook his head. “Poor, dumb, loyal Arthur. You still think you’re really a knight.”
“What did they offer you, Tim?” I asked, my voice surprisingly even. “What was worth betraying your family?”
“We aren’t family!” he yelled. “And you aren’t a queen! You’re nothing, just an overgrown toy who talks about loyalty but throws herself at the nearest man while her supposed husband’s too sick to defend himself!”
“You’re one of us,” I replied.
“No, I’m not. I decide who I am, and as for what they promised me? They promised me you.” He leered, then turned to Blanche. “Both of you.”
“You’ll still just be king of the toy box,” I said.
“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,” he replied.
Behind us, angry voices sounded, followed by gunshots. Mark burst through the doorway, his clothes stained with blood. He lunged for Blanche, just as Arthur lunged for me. The two knights joined hands, and the lab disappeared. A red haze surrounded us, and pain shot through every fiber of my body. Through the agony I felt my heartbeat, once, twice, three times, and then it was gone. We stood in a brick hallway. Arthur was on one knee, and Mark had collapsed to the ground. Blanche knelt over him.
“Where are we?”
“Subway service tunnel,” Arthur gasped. “Secondary rendezvous point.”
“When did we decide on a secondary location? And how did you get us through the EM field?” I demanded.
“Two of us working together. Camilla thought we could get through the barrier, but it would hurt,” Mark gasped. “And the knights have always agreed that this would be a good place to meet.” He got to his feet with Blanche’s help. A diamond pendant hung around his neck, supported by a shoelace, same as Arthur’s. I felt a small twinge of satisfaction. Getting a second fake heart stone had been my contribution to the plan. “Easy to leave from here, just in case we ever got a chance to run. We never told the bishops. I just hope the others made it here.”
“They’re here,” Arthur replied, pointing to chalk lines low on the wall. “Probably spotted the soldiers the moment the first group arrived at the gas station.”
“We can’t abandon Lily and the other children!” Blanche cried.
“We won’t,” I said. “We�
�ll find them and the kings, and make our family whole. The Agency can’t hide the children forever.”
“Are we a family?” Arthur asked, still on his knees, his shoulders slumped. “You heard Tim.”
“We are,” I replied. “Everything we’ve done, everything we’ve suffered, makes us real.” I held out my hand to help him up. “I don’t know exactly what comes next, but at least it will be our choice. We’ve got our skills, and we’ve got each other. And we’re free.” Arthur staggered to his feet and took my hand, and we made our way toward the daylight at the end of the tunnel.
FIREWABBY
Mark Charke
Measures of sanity among planeswalkers are difficult to come by. What is normal changes for you. Laws of physics that are cast in stone in one place can be like smoke elsewhere. As a child I saw a fly caught in a spider’s web. I imagined what it would be like to be the fly. I imagined being the spider. I never thought about being the web.
I use magic, not parlour tricks. My parents named me John Stuart. I burned their house down at the age of three. I had no control at that age. They left me at the doorsteps of a church. There I was called Firestarter. They taught me. You would be surprised what you can do with faith, a total dedication to something and a library. I learned to control the fire. I learned to transform into other things.
Today, it doesn’t matter what day it is anymore, I stopped. I wandered into a picturesque meadow. Trees, grass, sky; brown, green, blue. A massive tree lay on its side, long dead and covered in loam, half swallowed by the earth.
Faith is about listening and having the courage to act. I heard desire. It manifested as a sea of voices saying “Come,” silently. The screaming disturbed the leaves where they hung from the trees, unmoving. The wind remained still, except for the gale force of breath, which tugged at my red cloak and made the voices. The cloak could be influenced by things that were here, yet not entirely here. There was something flowing into this world from somewhere nearby, something not of this world, not normal. I felt dizzy for a moment so I became something that could not get dizzy.
The voices changed. The word became a murmur of different words, questions; who, how, brother and what? I saw the rabbit hole tucked into the roots of the fallen tree. Inside I saw, felt, chaos, an infinite drop into eternity. As I dropped into the bottomless pit, I caught a glimpse of a rabbit across the meadow. Perhaps it had meant to say something to me? It vanished as I fell.
Here and now, I fell. Chaos came as an old upright piano. A table with sweet cakes. A ladder with one broken rung. An umbrella unfolded into a mushroom. I saw all these things around me in the small hole. Roots moved by on the walls of the tunnel, far too deep now to be possible. I spun and twisted. Things changed. The piano opened a mouth full of pointed daggers. The cakes exploded into ribbons. The ladder folded itself into a chessboard. The mushroom ate itself.
I landed on the chessboard. My red cloak swirled around me. Red pieces stood around me. Opposite were the black pieces. I had made a mistake; checkers, not chess. I considered my death here on a checkers board. I felt sort of insulted. I stood and looked around at the piece placement. The game had not yet started.
A self-important snort of laughter marked the start. I saw a giant table beneath the board and two massive opponents prepared to face off to an audience of hundreds who stood in hushed silence. A massive hand reached across the board and slid a black piece forward.
Next, a gaudy red-gloved hand stretched out toward my person. I rolled out of the way and slapped at the hand. The crowd was silent. Only their heads moved, turning.
I summoned flames. They were not confronting some helpless wanderer, disoriented and desperate. Fire flowed, the board burned and the plastic pieces melted into gobs of quicksilver tar and blood. Magic here had a strangeness and I had to struggle to control it.
I became a giant, just a larger version of myself. I exploded out of the conflagration, becoming their size. Not a soul gasped or flinched. The player merely reached for me, despite my size. I slapped his hand away. The hundreds, dressed all in different shades of red and black, leaned forward just slightly.
“Cheaters will not be tolerated!”
The tone was sharp and arrogant, self important. A queen, obviously, dressed in black and red filled out a tall throne of brilliant gold and sparkling crystals. Her head, larger than her torso, cast a shadow over her shoulders. Her crown, a silver band of some kind, was lost in her beehive of braided hair. I abandoned the hope of logical conversation.
Her hand reached across the 100 metres between us, growing in size as it did and swatted me like a bug. The army of spectators, the table, the contestants, the queen, and the fire, moved away very quickly. I saw a forest that made no sense in its growth. I saw a mountain range in the distance that tasted like dandelion flowers. I licked my lips, not knowing how I could learn that.
The landing did not hurt as much as it should have. Something broke underneath me. It was bread. I found myself on a table bigger than what would be normal. Massive cups and saucers were spread about, between teapots scattered without discernible pattern. One of them appeared to be made from of the smell of late afternoon sunlight in the summer. I blinked and looked at it harder but did not see it with my eyes. I only interpreted smell. A smashed pocket watch sat nearby, its gold chain hanging off the table.
A man in a hat wider at the top than the bottom flipped a cup over and slammed it down over me. Tea went everywhere. I could smell the warm tea soaking into my cloak. I became a large knight in armour, sort of. My form had a melted wax look as my control ebbed.
The cup grew bigger with me. I smashed my mailed gauntlets against it. It cracked and shattered. The pieces hovered for a second before growing wings and becoming butterflies. I shooed them away.
“I am the Hatter, mad.”
Standing on the table, I looked down at the short man bowing formally with hat in hand.
“Won’t you stay for tea?”
“No.”
I drew a massive sword from my pocket and faced him. We both paused and looked at the slight bend in the blade.
“Oh, excellent. I knew you would stay.”
I kicked one of the teapots off the table. It clanged to the ground.
“Gravitas!” The Hatter yelled and threw another one to the ground.
I ran.
“Not without your tea, you don’t.”
Tentacles of tea stretched out of each pot and grabbed me. They held me in a seat and the Hatter worked a pot up to my mouth. I became something that does not drink but it took every ounce of concentration. The hot liquid poured over what passed for my new face.
“Oh, you are for the jabberwock!”
That did not sound good. The Hatter folded the table in half, then again and it became a suitcase and bounded away. The chairs turned and ran. The rabbit appeared. A glimpse of white and a green smoking jacket. It gasped and ducked back from where it had appeared. I had grown sick of this place and of running. It had not helped.
The jabberwock appeared beastly to be certain, what could be actually seen: tentacles, wind, claws and teeth. To describe its colour I would use the sound and feel of breaking crayons. It bounded toward me on all six truffles worth of legs. Its presence seemed to make things more difficult to understand. Certain words changed, lost meaning and took on new meaning. Its breath smelled like blue. It made me gag. I made it burn.
The fire erupted chaotically, swirling like dye spooned into water. I let go of control and it grew stronger this way. The trees burned. The grass evaporated. The air boiled. The jabberwock became a hiss and crackle. I did not take my eyes off it.
When it stepped out of a cloud of smoke and its teeth snapped open with a loud snicker snack, I swung my blade. It cracked and bent further on the hide. I wrinkled my nose and heard yellow. It might have been green. My senses continued to make less sense.
The claws cut and stabbed. I experienced pain and cheese. Poison. They had finally had their way wit
h me. Blood dripped, and I went for my greatest trick by letting go. I became my greatest and oldest form. My snarl erupted from behind long teeth and ancient eyes. My skin became red steel plates. A dragon fears nothing.
I breathed fire, not that pathetic magic. Not that bit of explosion. Not that shallow flame but true fire, dragon fire. It came from within, from my heart and lungs, drawn from my very soul. The jabberwock evaporated in the inferno.
It did not die, however. I would never know if my senses saw the laws of physics twist or if it had just been madness. The jabberwock became the taste of ash and the scent of time. No longer a thing, I could not kill it; not at all. Its abstract form did not slow it down or make its claws less effective. It bit and sliced, and I bled.
It circled when I looked to retreat. It came all around me, laughing in scents and premonitions. I slowed. Magic failed completely. I became a man again, a badly injured man. It could kill me easily now. The claws stabbed and cut, but only little cuts. Little stab. Little slash. Little pains.
I needed to flee this torture. I needed time to heal. Perhaps a form it couldn’t hurt? My brain scrambled and then stopped. I realized the form, the only one they would let me take. I realized the trap. I saw them shrieking in delight. The rabbit, the Hatter, the queen.
Cut. Cut. Cut. Eventually they would get bored and have it kill me. I understood now. It was shallow comfort. I became the jabberwock.
My mind split and I saw things from all directions. Colour. Taste. Touch. Smell. Sound. They were all the same, even existence and thought. I experienced everything as one. Then someone giggled. Me. I achieved a perverted enlightenment. Matter could be thought. Madness – I had let it in. I hated that it felt right.
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