by Laura Legend
Zach was busy looking for another way out. They couldn’t go back the way they’d come, but that didn’t mean that they were as trapped as they seemed. He closed his eyes and tried to extend his awareness into the space around them, “feeling” for the presence of some kind of adjacent space in the Underside. He felt along the corners of the space behind the crypt, then down along the floor. When he turned back in the direction of the crypt, he stopped.
A faint noise was coming from inside the crypt itself.
“Do you guys hear that?” Zach asked. “Cass, give me a hand with this.”
Zach leaned into the crypt, leveraging his weight against its stone lid. It trembled but barely moved. Cass joined him and, together, the stone lid started to slide. They pushed until it crashed off the far side and the crypt yawned opened in front of them, pitch black inside.
Zach took Cass by the elbow. “Listen.” he said. They both strained to listen.
“Meow,” the crypt said.
They both did a double-take as Atlantis jumped out of the crypt and into Cass’s arms. Zach took a second, closer look inside the crypt.
“Stairs,” Zach said. “There are stairs inside.”
Atlantis purred and squirmed in Cass’s arms.
“Good work,” Maya replied without looking around, her gun still trained on the corner. She backed along the wall toward them.
Cass handed the bag with the relic back to Maya. “Ladies first,” Cass said, gesturing with her sword toward the stairs.
As Maya hopped over the lip of the box and down into the stairwell, Atlantis hissed and took a swipe at her. Cass brushed it off, distracted by the thought of what might come around the corner next. Zach, though, noticed.
“Down you go, big boy,” Cass said. “Seers bring up the rear.”
Zach thought about objecting, but didn’t want to waste their time. He jumped into the crypt. Standing a couple of steps deep, he called for Atlantis to make it easier for Cass swing over the edge. The cat jumped from Cass’s arms, by-passing Zach, and disappear down the stairs into the darkness.
“I see how it is,” Zach said, winking at Cass. “I suppose I’ll have to be happy with winning one of you over.”
Cass gave him a tired smile but, before she could follow him into the darkness, time thickened and slowed. Zach appeared frozen in place, halfway down the stairs.
Stillness. Silence. Then a shattering sound.
“Cassandra,” the powerfully familiar and violently strange voice called again, echoing down the hallway. “Cassandra!”
The voice gripped something deep inside of her, rooting Cass to the spot. A rumbling sound filled the hallway—some combination of heavy footsteps, trembling walls, and the grating of metal on stone.
Cass fought to regain control of her body and reenter the flow of time. She forced her legs to move, one step at a time, until she cleared the blind corner. She had to see what was coming. She had to see what was calling her name.
But once she’d turned the corner, it was clear that the monstrous thing that had come into view was not what had been calling her name.
The towering monster was misshapen and lop-sided. One eye glowed red and the other socket was empty. Rows of razor sharp teeth gnashed in its mouth. One giant arm noisily dragged an enormous axe across the stone floor while the other arm hung shriveled and limp at its side. Its clothes were mostly tattered and moldering, the only exception being a shiny leather vest with the beast’s name lovingly embroidered inside a pink heart: “FRED,” it said. The monster had the look of some feral, half-dreamed nightmare set free in the waking world.
Cass tightened her grip on her sword and dropped into a defensive stance. She fought to regain control of both her body and her emotions. She didn’t see how she could defeat whatever this thing was. Maybe she could just give Zach and Maya time to escape. Hopelessness swelled in her gut, rising like black bile in her throat, but she pushed it down again.
The monster filled almost the entire passageway. Cass decided she’d better seize the advantage before she lost what open ground remained, trapping her in the crypt.
Okay, “Fred.” Here we go, Cass thought.
She advanced, sword raised, as the monster swung its axe in a great, looping circle, taking a chunk out of the ceiling and embedding the blade deep in the stone floor. Cass danced to the side, avoiding the swing, ducked under the haymaker that followed, and cleanly severed the thing’s limp and shriveled arm with her sword. The monster cried out in alarm and pain, its voice pitched high and innocent like the voice of a child who’d just discovered the world was a cruel and lonely place. Cass choked down the shame and pity that rose in her and looked for a way to take advantage of the beast’s confusion and distress. She decided to go straight for its heart, the location clearly marked by the pink, embroidered heart that framed its name.
Sorry, Fred, Cass thought as she lowered the point of her sword, aimed at its heart, and ran at the thing like a jousting knight.
Cass, though, was a beat too slow. The monster backhanded her against the wall and her sword clattered to the floor between its legs. It threw back its head and roared at her in anger and pain, sniffling back tears. It lifted a giant foot to squash her before she could get back up, but Cass rolled away just in time. The beast stomped again and again, each time just missing Cass.
Cass, though, was running out of hallway. She struggled to her feet, braced against the back wall.
Then, like a bolt of lightning, the scene before Cass cracked in two as she heard that familiar, violent voice call her name again: “Cassandra!”
It felt to Cass as if, in response to that crack of lightning, time itself had been split down the middle, as if time had forked between two possible paths, two possible worlds, while she, somehow, remained poised between them, undecided. One fork unfolded along a line where, with its next move, the monster pinned her in the corner and crushed her head against the wall. The other fork unfolded along a line where, with her next move, Cass swept the monster’s weak leg and sent it crashing backwards, splitting its head like a melon on the axe still embedded in the stone floor.
With a gentle push, Cass choose which line of falling dominoes to set in motion and then, almost as a spectator, watched the events unfold: she swept the leg, the monster toppled backwards, and its head split open. When the sequence ended, Cass found herself thrown abruptly back into time, snapping back into alignment with her own present self, standing victorious over the beast’s body as blood and brains drained from its skull.
Aligned again with her own present body, time started flowing smoothly, regularly again. She could hear Zach calling for her, panicked, from the crypt. One moment she had been there in the crypt with him, the next she was, from his perspective, gone. Whatever bubble of time Cass had just been living in, hadn’t included him. Atlantis rubbed up against her leg—he’d come back for her—pulling her with his tail toward Zach, the hidden stairs, and the possibility of escape. Cass moved to follow the cat, unsure what had just happened or why.
However, just as she rounded the corner, she heard the violently familiar voice call one last time. “Cassandra,” the voice whispered, melancholic.
In response, Atlantis froze, the hair on his back standing on end. He looked like he might run back to the voice.
Cass had had enough.
“We’re done,” she decided, scooping up Atlantis. Cass took Zach’s extended hand and jumped over the side of crypt, onto the stairwell. Together, they took the stairs two at a time, running to catch up with Maya, and Cass didn’t look back again.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Maya hadn’t gotten far. But it didn’t look like she’d been waiting for them either. They sprinted down the narrow Underside hallway. The passage looked identical to the one that Cass and Zach had initially used: blank walls, a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, ninety degree angles framing the turns.
Maya seemed to know where they were going. Cass tried to her empty min
d and just run. She emptied her head into her feet and focused on the feel of her rubber soles on the concrete floor as they rolled through each stride. Her pace faltered only once. After their second left turn, she thought she saw, out of the corner of her eye, another locked and unmarked door, flush with the wall. But when she looked back with her good eye, all she saw was an empty wall.
The hallways stretched on until, as before, they were suddenly out in the open, standing under the domed, twilight sky of an Underside hub. Cass bent over, hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. Zach, hands on his hips, stayed close by her side. Atlantis, without looking back, bolted into the crowd and disappeared. Maya, her waist-length hair still impeccably braided, looked like she’d just stepped out of a fashion magazine aiming to sell trendy tactical gear to semi-professional body-builders.
They all waited a beat, eyes fixed on the tunnel’s mouth, to see if anything had followed them.
Nothing.
When Cass and Zach turned to go, Maya had already slipped off into the crowd. They couldn’t see her head above the mass of people, but they could detect the collateral ripple that signaled her passage. The crowd parted for her like a school of guppies for a shark.
Cass and Zach fought to catch up. The crowd did not part for them.
Cass had a hard time focusing on the work of maneuvering through the throng. She was still shaken by her novel experience of forked time. The implications seemed staggering. But, more immediately, she felt a kind of unbearable lightness deep inside her chest, expanding and contracting in time with her still pounding heart. She felt transparent, as if, beneath her clothes, she were composed of translucent layers of fine hairs, pale skin, red muscle, blue veins, pink organs, and white bone. She could feel her own skull, pale and cold and empty, bobbing like a balloon tethered to her spine by a string. She felt raw and naked and exposed. She felt incredibly powerful and enormously fragile.
She let go of Zach’s hand and stopped for a moment in the middle of the crowd, folding her arms across her chest and squeezing her legs together in an irrational gesture of modesty and vulnerability, afraid that anyone looking would see right through her.
Zach draped his coat over her shoulders and pulled her close, tucking her under his arm. She flinched instinctively but then hung on to him for dear life. He kissed her on the forehead and guided her through the busy streets. Step by step, the sensation drained away and she felt more herself.
Soon, they were back at the York office tower and she was barely trembling.
Maya was already inside the lobby at the security desk, her back to them. She gestured impatiently. The guard pulled something dark off the countertop, stuffed it under the counter, and then handed back her bag. She examined the contents and zipped it up tight.
Zach and Cass pushed through the revolving doors and into the lobby. Even from across the room, Cass could see the guards stiffen at the sight of her, sweat beading on their foreheads. The guards, though, were clearly more afraid of Maya. At a nod from her, they moved to surround Zach and Cass, nightsticks and Tasers drawn.
“What is this,” Zach shouted at Maya. He sounded angry and, despite himself, a bit hurt. “What’s going on?”
“I am sorry,” Maya said calmly, “but our business is done. Know, though, that I am grateful for your help in securing the relic.”
Cass’s cheeks burned bright red.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Cass said, watching the guards hesitate in response, “until I’ve talked to Richard.”
Maya shook her head sadly. “I am afraid that is not possible, Cassandra. Richard is definitely not here today.”
Maya bowed at the waist, more polite than deferential, and turned to go, but stopped and added: “Thanks, too, for the Gospel of St. Paul. In the long run, it will be even more valuable than the chains.”
Maya patted her vest pocket where she’d secured the manuscript. For just a moment she looked surprised, then angry. Her eyes narrowed.
“Do you mean this book?” Zach asked, holding up the slim volume.
Maya’s eyes narrowed even further. She hefted the bag with the relic, the veins in her forearm popping, her long braid swinging.
“We only need the relic, Maya,” Cass said, her voice cracking. “We just need to save Miranda. Let us have the relic and the books is yours.”
Maya weighed her options. She looked Zach up and down, but locked eyes with Cass. Her expression softened uncharacteristically, edging today pity.
“As you wish,” Maya said. She put the bag down and, with a graceful kick, sent it sliding across the polished floor.
Cass picked up the bag. Zach handed the manuscript to the nearest guard.
“My advice is to move quickly,” Maya said. “You are running out of time.”
She looked ready to go but, after a pause, Maya directed one last comment at Cass. “You are so young, Cassandra. You understand so little. I do sincerely hope that, in the end, you do not find what you are looking for. It will destroy you.”
With that, Maya disappeared through a side door and Zach and Cass were shuffled back onto the street.
They were hardly out the door, though, before Cass grabbed Zach’s hand and started pulling him down the street.
“She’s right,” Cass said, “we are running out of time.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The crowded streets were beginning to thin. It didn’t take them long to get back to BO-BS cantina. Zach hesitated at the door, remembering how he’d been pawed and cornered during their first visit.
“Come on, tough guy,” Cass said. “I’ll still protect you.”
Business had also slowed inside. The tone was subdued, the male dancers off duty, the lights dimmed, and the customers that remained were all gathered in little knots around tables and booths, nursing drinks. However time worked in the Underside, the whole hub seemed to be quieting down.
Once Zach got a look at the now somber room, he stopped trying to hide behind Cass, straightened up, and took the lead. They didn’t have any trouble navigating their way toward the back.
They expected to have to get past the bouncer again, but no one was posted at the door. Zach knocked. No response. Cass turned the knob and gave the door a gentle shove, letting it swing open to give them a view of the room. The lights were off and the space was dim.
Cass drew her sword and flicked on the light with the tip of the blade.
The office was empty. The pneumatic tubes that branched wildly along the ceiling, disappearing into the walls, were silent. The whole room had the feel of an empty stage, abandoned as soon as the performance was complete.
“Damn it,” Cass whispered.
They took a closer look around the room, trying to keep their growing panic in check. Zach checked the closets and looked behind the door. Cass took a closer look at the desk.
The images and scrollwork carved into the surface of the desk caught her attention. Already, in just over twenty-four hours, a thin layer of dust had collected on the surface. She wiped it clean with her sleeve. The images varied and included a whole menagerie of mythological creatures—unicorns, dragons, phoenixes—but these diverse elements were all tied together by iconography that was explicitly Christian. She traced the larger patterns in the work and noticed that they skillfully led the eye toward a specific focal point: the scrollwork that embedded the reference to “LUKE 15:24.”
Cass tapped her finger on the verse. Zach was looking over her shoulder now.
