by Lou Paduano
“Soriya.” Loren rushed to her side. He helped her find her footing, sticking with the right side of her body to stay in sight, the left completely swelled over in a giant, purple bruise.
“I’m okay. I’m….”
Leaning heavily on Loren, the two waited over the body of Nathaniel Evans. They stood in silence, hoping, praying that the body remained fixed in place.
Satisfied with the results after what seemed to be an eternity, the two continued toward the shattered windows. As they inched closer to the edge, Soriya’s hand clasped against Loren’s chest to hold him back.
He shook his head. “I’ll be fine.”
Around them, the lights continued to spread outward. They glowed brighter and brighter, screamed louder and louder, slowly covering Portents from above. The shifting runes that covered the stone no longer glowed across its cool surface. Yet the lights continued.
There was fear in her eyes.
“What is it? Soriya, tell me.”
Her voice was soft. A whisper against the wind.
“It’s not over.”
Chapter Forty-Four
“What do you mean?” Loren yelled over the rushing wind. He took a step back from the ledge, turning Soriya so that she faced him. “How can it not be over?”
“Take a look, Loren. Do you see it ending?”
Around them, the lights spanned as far as they could see. There was nothing but the glowing green cloud, the city lost beneath it. The rushing wind pounded against them along the edge of the building. The wind continued to howl, forcing them to yell over it.
“We beat the bad guy, Soriya,” Loren replied. After three days of running around looking for answers, the nightmare was supposed to be over. Evans was dead. It should have been over. “That’s the rule. You beat the bad guy and everything goes back to normal. No freak storms. No quakes. Done and done. I’m talking fifth dimension rules here.”
“Loren.” Soriya smiled. “Sometimes I have no idea if you’re speaking English or not.”
“Good,” replied her friend. “Tell me what we’re facing.”
Soriya looked out over the storm cloud of green light. “The energy is still bursting from the Bypass chamber.”
“Causing the quakes and this.”
She nodded. “There is a point where this ends. Where the cloud will reach maximum distance and then…”
“The box.” Loren thought of the map and the four points he had drawn for Ruiz and Pratchett. “The scenes of the first four murders. They formed a box.”
Of course, thought Soriya. Where she had spent her time unraveling the signs and the trophies, Loren figured out the location aspect of each scene. “If the chamber falls, if the energy stored within the Bypass spreads to those end points, the box as you called it, the cascade effect will level the city.”
“Exactly what Evans wanted.” Loren looked to the unmoving body of the mastermind. He wrote a story he wasn’t able to see the end of after all. “How do we stop it?”
Soriya felt Mentor’s Greystone within her grasp. From the far end of the room, she glimpsed her stone between the fallen bodies of Loren’s colleagues. She turned to Loren, worry and doubt vanishing, her mind running through solution after solution to no avail. “We can’t. I have to do this.”
She left Loren, hobbling on weary limbs and burned flesh. She grabbed the stone in her free hand and held both before her. This was bigger than her. She knew it would take more than she had ever done, more than she had ever imagined. Looking at Mentor’s stone, she felt him by her side. She needed him and he was there. That was the way it had always been. One last time, that was how it would be.
In the center of the room, she stopped. She looked in every direction. The cloud was moving faster, spreading wider. There was no more time for thought, no more time for planning when there was no plan to make.
She knelt on the floor, holding the two stones in front of her. She took a deep breath. Channeling energy into the stone was never something she had contemplated before, and never with two stones at the same time. There were so many unknowns. So much could go wrong. She refused to allow it.
Loren called out to her.
“Soriya.”
She glanced at him, his ruffled hair and uneven beard. He looked better than he had in years, even soaked in blood. She smiled at him. “I am glad, you know. Glad you came back. Even now.”
“So am I. Even now.” He nodded. There was concern on his face. He needed answers to a question he was afraid to ask, knowing she wouldn’t reply. “You don’t have to be the one to do this.”
She took a deep breath. “Yes, I do. It’s my job.”
“But—”
“Greg,” she said, closing her eye and holding the two Greystones before her, letting them rest on open palms. “No more talking.”
“Right.” Loren stepped back toward Ruiz, pulling the unconscious man further under the desk.
Soriya lifted the two stones to eye level. Every ounce of will, every shred of concentration poured from her mind through her body to the waiting stones. Every hope, every dream, every single moment of pure joy fed into the Greystones. Slowly, they began to glow.
She pictured in her mind the five symbols scrawled throughout the city. Five symbols that unlocked the secret of the Bypass for the entire population of Portents to see for the first time. Each one lay before her mind’s eye and she fed them into the Greystones. She started with the final one—Mentor’s sign—and worked her way back to Abigail Fortune. Each one, from Vincan to Gothic, fed into the stone in reverse. The stones began to hum within her grasp. She inched them closer together, the light of each sign illuminating the surface of the stones. Faster and faster they scanned atop each slab, causing the two stones to vibrate as they closed in on one another. Her two hands pushed together and so did the stones, folding into the same space while the light of the rotating signs glowed brighter and brighter on their surface. All shadows in the enormous office faded before the light of the Greystones.
“Balance is the key,” she heard Mentor say, his stone and hers working together as they always had. He was with her, the teacher watching over his student. She believed that more than ever, no matter the name he carried and no matter the past. He was with her when she needed him most. She was never alone.
“Balance moves through us into the world. The Bypass is one half. The Greystone is the other. Have faith, little one. As I do in you.”
Light exploded outward from the stones in all directions. The eighty-sixth floor of the obsidian tower lit up like a Christmas tree, everything turning white before cracking along the heavens.
The light spread out from the tower, riding the wave of the glowing green cloud stretching over the city’s skyline. Melding with the energy of the Bypass, it became a giant spotlight in the sky. Below in the city streets, the quakes dissipated. The cracks along the pavement folded. The city healed from the combined efforts of the Bypass and the Greystone.
The light washed over the city, taking with it everything Evans had set forth, and put it back where it belonged. The energies of the Bypass folded into the light and faded when the bright white of the Greystones spread out faster and faster.
As it passed the limits of Portents, it faded, leaving behind only the clear night sky. Darkness returned over the city. The streets were no longer cracked, no longer exposing the sewers and tunnels below.
The city was safe. The threat was over.
Loren stood up from the safety of the desk. Ruiz did not budge. Loren watched his chest rise and fall with each breath. He stepped to the side of the floor, the cool night breeze cutting through him. The shadows of the evening sprawled out over the city like a blanket. His feet did not shake beneath him. There was silence in the air. No wails of pain or screams of joy riding the wave. Silence filled him with peace.
“Fifth dimension rules. That’s what I was talking about.” His laughter echoed out over the city he never called home, yet felt more in tune with every sec
ond he stayed. “No more quakes. No more lights. Tell me we won, Soriya.”
Her body lay in the center of the room. It convulsed wildly in the darkness. Loren raced over to her, pulling her bruised and broken body close to keep her from shaking. She fought his hold, her eyes refusing to open. Her body wanted to shake itself loose along the floor but he refused to let go.
“No,” Loren whispered, holding her against him. “Dammit, Soriya. Come on now. Stay with me.”
As suddenly as it started, it stopped. Soriya’s body simply stopped. Her eyes refused to open. Her lungs refused to breathe. Her heart refused to beat. Loren called out to her in the darkness.
“Stay…”
Chapter Forty-Five
Mercy Hospital saw a surge in traffic during the two weeks that followed The Night of the Lights. The initial waves of patients brought lacerations and concussions from the shattering of glass throughout the eight-block radius engulfed in chaos that night. The hospital was always a hotbed for this type of activity and several others, with its position downtown in the shadow of the obsidian tower. Most patients arrived from drunken arguments from the downtown bar scene, or were escorted by police from failed attempts down the diamond strip. Never had there been so many people from a single incident that seemed to stretch the boundaries of the services offered at Mercy.
There were side effects from The Night of the Lights. Headaches. Nightmares. The Children’s Ward was maxed out with youngsters carrying fevers of 103 and higher. The Suicide Hotline carried double shifts for its employees with every line occupied. When one call was completed, successfully pulling someone back from the ledge, sometimes literally, another call would break through seconds later. There was no end to it during the fourteen-day period after that night.
No one on the staff spoke about it. They were too busy, too focused on the patients at hand. Looks were the only thing exchanged between them, cold and fearful stares at what would come next. Every nurse, every doctor, every intern and resident on staff fought through the fear to get the job done. The city of Portents came together to work through that night at Mercy Hospital. Volunteers lined the halls, helping talk patients through what was seen, what was felt, to try to heal the wounds created by the singular event.
A wall was started. A single nurse came up with the idea, late in her shift. She had finished checking the vitals of a young boy. His fever broke in the middle of the day and a youthful glow was slowly returning to his face. She sat with him listening about the night he saw his grandparents walking the halls of his home. He was scared of them, but he didn’t know why. The nurse held him close, whispering repeatedly. “You survived.” She took out a flyer, one they used during charity drives, and wrote the boy’s name on it. She placed it on the wall leading to the emergency ward of the hospital. Soon, other names joined the wall and a large banner hung above them reading, Survival Makes Us Stronger.
As the second week rolled on, every patient filled out a flyer and posted it on the wall when they were discharged from Mercy Hospital’s care. Hundreds of names hung on the wall. From the young to the old. From the scared to the wounded to the sick. It was an affirmation. It was a point of pride. Surviving in Portents. There was much discussion, through the news, about what occurred. Speculation. Theories. Each one that arose made the night seem less real to the people, until finally they stopped. The night was still there, held around their memories like a fly buzzing near an ear. It was real for the patients of Mercy Hospital. The names of every patient hanging on the wall confirmed that much. Every name with every face as doctors and nurses rushed back and forth to the dozen emergencies that lined the halls and filled the rooms.
Only one patient remained nameless—a young woman in her early twenties. Brown skinned with long, dark hair that covered her shoulders. The purple had faded to yellows and greens but the bruise that made up the left side of her face remained. Small burns covered her arms and legs. Her knuckles were broken on her right hand. Dozens of monitors and machines surrounded her bedside on the third floor of the ICU. Heart monitors. Breathing tubes. Everything to keep her body functioning while it attempted to knit itself back together. She was one of the few with serious injuries from that night, as if she had been in the fight of her life. To the staff, she was the only Jane Doe in the building. To the detective that visited her room nightly, she carried a different name.
When Loren brought Soriya to the hospital that night, he was sure he was too late. There was no pulse. There was no sign of life. Her face faded before him as he carried her down a city block to the hospital from the base of the black tower. In the swarm of people that had taken refuge at the facility, he was a lone man screaming for help. It took Pratchett’s calming presence to slow the panic in Loren’s heart. The tall officer held tight to Ruiz’s body, his badge shining on his uniform like a beacon for the doctors passing in the hall. They rushed over and took Ruiz and Soriya. Ruiz would be fine, Loren knew. There was breath in his body, though Evans’ brutal attack would never truly leave his friend.
Soriya, though, was another matter. Pratchett asked no questions. He made no comments, the two of them waiting that night in the shadow of the dark tower. Jankowitz had joined her colleagues on the eighty-sixth floor; the crushing blow of Daniels’ body in combination with the tinted window had killed her as easily as the other three officers. Loren and Ruiz were the sole survivors.
It took hours but eventually someone returned with news. Soriya, her name not given by Loren or Pratchett for her safety, was alive. Barely. She was in a coma and that was where she remained two weeks later.
Loren sipped his coffee by her bedside. The small Styrofoam cup crinkled in his hand, distracting him from the beeping of the machines that surrounded the bed. He had been stopping by the room every night since the tower. He sat, mostly in silence, watching the breathing tubes keep air in Soriya’s lungs and listening to the slow beeping of her heart monitor. The first week had been split between her room and Ruiz’s down the hall. Most of the time he stayed away as Michelle and Ruiz’s three daughters showered the lucky man with love. After seven days of Jell-O and daytime television, Ruiz had had enough. As he always did, he discharged himself rather than wait for a doctor to give approval.
Loren spent much of the second week by Soriya’s bedside. When the nurses came by asking if he needed anything, he waved them off. He held his coffee cup up and claimed that was all he could possibly want. It wasn’t true. He wanted—he needed—her to wake up. It took that night in the shadow of the tower to see that he needed her by his side as much as she needed him. Through loss, through failure and darkness, they found each other.
As the stares continued, as the questions mounted from the staff of the hospital, Loren realized from their eyes how bad he truly looked. His beard was completely overgrown. His button-down shirt was missing two buttons, one on the cufflinks where his sleeve was torn. Showers were staggered. Sleep was even less periodic. It was as if the night atop the tower had never ended, would never end until he saw the wide glow of her auburn eyes again. Some sign that they would make it.
The coffee made him jittery, his leg beating a tune against the floor. It was drowned out by the sound of the monitors. His eyes refused to watch her struggle to live. He took another sip, his eyes on the floor and the small bag he brought with him.
“The newspapers have stopped fishing for stories about what happened,” he said aloud, trying to keep his eyes from closing. “They know they’d never understand what we would tell them anyway. Understand or believe. Keeping the public in the dark makes more sense than informing them that a corrupt soul from Hell just tried to destroy the city with a mystical energy source that no one can comprehend.”
He imagined her anger rising at another secret kept from the city. Soriya believed that Portents could handle the truth, no matter how extreme. She, however, did not see the fear that ran through the people in the hospital or the despair of the calls that rang through looking for someone to explain w
hy the screams of the dead wouldn’t go away. Some truths came with too high a price. The sanity of a city was such a cost and Loren refused to pay it.
“Ruiz is back on his feet,” he continued, finishing the cold cup of coffee in his hands. “I’ve only been to see him twice since he escaped his tormentors here but he looked like…well, he looked like Ruiz, I guess. He wouldn’t talk about what happened or the scars it left him down his right arm. He wouldn’t talk about much, actually. I’ve known him a long time. We’ve been through a lot, seen a lot, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so tired. He’ll bounce back. He has to bounce back. Just like you.”
His hand reached out and covered hers. He squeezed it gently. They were all more tired than they had been weeks before. Before Evans. So much had changed.
“This is my city.” He felt a smirk creep on the corner of his lips. “I can’t believe you said that to him. But it’s true, isn’t it? It is your city. Just like it was Beth’s. Did I ever tell you what she used to call me? The world’s worst date. Married me anyway, so what does that say about her, but it was true. I was. I went to the same restaurants, ate the same food. Take me out of my comfort zone and I was a wreck. I knew everything I liked in a three-block radius around our apartment, and that was it. Everything else was foreign and I wanted nothing to do with it. She owned this city, knew every corner, every deli, every store. I was too wrapped up in comparing Portents to Chicago that I never saw it the way she did. The joy and the wonder she saw and wrote about in her work. The joy that you see.”
Loren leaned in close. The bruise that covered her left side blocked the right side from view. It shone in the dim overhead lights of the room.
