by S W Clarke
The blackness enveloped me like a warm blanket, and as I stared into the sky, my chest loosened with the prospect of life. I sensed I could go any way I liked, reach high into the sky, sink deep into the water. No problem felt insurmountable, and no desire unattainable.
The possibilities were infinite.
I don’t know how long I spent in the present, because that infinitude included time. I floated in it without worry, only an encompassing awe. Until, like a flower unfolding to catch sunlight, I eased back into the blanket of the stars. My eyes closed, relishing the warmth, until I felt grass under my feet.
Fragrant grass. And a voice from behind me.
“Welcome back, encantado.”
My eyes opened. When I turned, Pythia still stood under the tree, leaning on her staff.
I wanted to hold on to this feeling—of infinite possibilities. It still glowed in my chest, though it dimmed as time resumed. “I want to go back.”
Pythia chuckled. “To infinity? You’ve already spent the entirety of the universe’s existence there.”
“Time wasn’t even a concept.” I stepped toward her. “What was that place?”
“Where we all begin.” Pythia tilted her head. “And where we all end. The precipice at either side of the cradle.”
“Why did you show me that?”
“Oh child”—she gave a tiny shake of the head—”I did not. You chose it yourself. Just as you chose this place.”
I lifted my eyes to the tree. “This was where you died.”
“And apparently what your brain chose as the place where the incomprehensible could become comprehensible. It’s comfortable—safe. Soon you will be able to return here as you choose.”
“As I choose?”
One finger lifted to point at me. “Yes. Do you remember what I told you under the tree?”
I remembered. “You told me to be decisive.”
She nodded. “It is a tremendous and sometimes terrible thing to wield, but this power is yours now. Your decisiveness will allow you to harness it.”
I didn’t fully understand what she meant, but I sensed the intent of it. I knew I needed to trust Pythia’s words—that with time, I would come to fully comprehend what she meant. And I understood something of this place and how it allowed me to grasp the oracle’s power. But not the portal—not what I had experienced. “I don’t know what I saw in there.”
Pythia turned toward the portal to the future. “You will.”
A second later, Serena emerged from the future. When she stepped out, a tear streaked from her left eye to her jaw in a straight line. Her bloodshot eyes found mine, and she walked straight toward me. She came so close I thought she would attack me.
But she only wrapped her arms around me. A tiny noise escaped her throat. “You are going to help my son. I know you will.”
I swallowed, frozen in her arms. The woman who had made my life a misery was embracing me. I didn’t know what to do, except that something in my brain told me Serena’s feelings were as authentic as anyone’s.
This is real, Isa. This is true.
So I did what one does when hugged.
I hugged her back.
Over her shoulder, Pythia gazed at me with such deep affection, tears hit my own eyes. And I didn’t know why, but I hugged Serena that much harder. Sometimes, even between enemies, the world doesn’t have to be good or evil. It can just be.
As the thought crossed my mind, the vision faded. The night sky bowed and folded, and the garden slipped away. Pythia went with it, and time resumed.
↔
I was back in the hospital room, just risen from the bed, and Serena’s hand was on my wrist. We stared at one another. Her eyes had gone so wide I could see the whites above and below her irises.
She knew. She knew what had just happened. She had been there, too.
All the strength seemed to go out of her, and when I pulled my wrist away, she didn’t resist. She just let me out of her grasp.
I sidestepped to the edge of the bed, afraid to take my eyes off her. Neither of us said anything as I backed to the closed door. My fingers scrambled for the handle, and when I found it, I finally spun around.
“Isabella,” she said.
I paused, gripping the door handle.
“Soon we shall share the burden of motherhood. Prepare yourself.”
I slowly turned back. “What did you say?”
She didn’t repeat herself. Instead, she said, “Once you find the others and escape, Daiski will come for you all. He’s not under my purview.”
“Where can I find the others?”
“Room 17. Justin will be in the medical hall.”
I stared at her for a long while, debating whether I should thank the woman whom I had spent the past six months trying to escape, and she stared back.
“Go,” she said finally. “And don’t forget your oath to my son.”
I yanked the door open. When I glanced back at her, she still stood by the empty bed, her hands by her sides. She blinked once, and I let the door close between us.
The burden of motherhood. Had I imagined her saying that?
In the hallway, the cold air felt colder than it had when I’d entered. My right hand clapped to my body—I was in a flimsy gown. But I was alone. I was completely alone.
I looked left and right, found myself staring down two ends of a long, long hallway with no best option. Before me lay Room 5. On my right, the numbers went down.
I needed to go left.
I ran, my bare feet slapping the tile.
This shouldn’t be possible, I thought. I shouldn’t have been able to run like this. But the oracle was one of the most powerful Others in existence, and now she was part of me. So I didn’t know any longer what I should be capable of.
After all, I had just manifested a vision with Serena Russo.
I reached the end of the hallway, where two very secure-looking doors presented themselves. One led into the next section of hallway, and one led to my right. Room 17.
I grasped the handle and pushed. I was greeted with a bellow so loud my ears started ringing, and an enormous figure rose up before me like an angry bear.
“Oh.” Hercules said as he lowered his arms, his restraints clinking. “It’s you.”
I blinked hard, tweaking one of my ringing ears with a finger. “It’s me.”
On the other side of the room, three figures began bouncing in a cage. Agape, Philia and my Cupid, the three of them penned like misbehaving dogs.
Philia’s fingers pressed through the cage’s grating. “Oh, it’s her! She’s come for us.”
My Cupid shoved him out of the way. “Isa, get me out of here. I can’t stand another minute with these two.”
Hercules’s eyes drifted to my left arm. “You have four limbs again.”
“It’s a long story. And I’ll tell it after I get all of you out of here.” I dashed around behind Hercules, studying his restraints. They were about three inches of metal around each wrist, and both wrist-restraints connected to chains that were bolted into the wall. “I don’t know how to get these off you.”
Hercules inclined his head around. With a tiny yank of the arms, the chains broke right off the wall.
My Cupid glared up at him from the cage. “Why didn’t you do that before?”
“I like being restrained.” Hercules winked at me.
Really? I thought. The son of Zeus is into that?
Then: Of course he’s into that.
I pointed to the cage. “Can you get the Cupids out?”
“Step back, tiny demigods.” Hercules came forward as the Cupids backed up, set one forefinger between the grating, and ripped a hole in the cage’s side like he was splitting tin foil. He pressed the edges apart just as easily.
The Cupids jostled with each other to get out, and finally my Cupid won (of course he won) and popped out first. He flew up to me. “Where’s Justin?”
“The medical hall.”
Philia
followed my Cupid. “How do you know that?”
“Serena told me.” I turned toward the door. “Come on.”
As we emerged into the hallway, Hercules gave me a strange look. “Serena? The woman whom you consider to be your ultimate nemesis?”
“It’s complicated.” I pointed at the still-locked door at the hallway’s end. “Can you open this?”
He observed the door, tilting his head, his eyes tracing around the edges. “It’s quite heavy.”
My Cupid scoffed. “Is that a no?”
He started backing down the hallway, the two chains still attached to his wrists dragging behind him. “No.”
We stared after him, and Agape lifted a finger. “Should we move?”
He kept walking down the hallway. “Yes.”
We moved back to the wall, flattening ourselves up against it. I had never seen Hercules charge at anything before, but I knew I didn’t want to be in the way of four hundred pounds of muscle.
“Isabella,” he called down the hallway.
I poked my head out. “Yes?”
“This is what I call ‘the Terminator.’ ”
I rolled my eyes. Justin and his pop culture references were finally rubbing off on the demigod. Before long, the two of them were going to be intolerable.
Hercules leaned forward and plunged down the hallway, his bare feet putting divots in the tiles as he gained speed. Soon the floor, walls and ceiling were rumbling as he powered down the hall and bolted by me in a blur.
In the next second, the door blasted right off its hinges, landing with a clang on the floor as Hercules disappeared through the frame.
When I stepped out into the hall, the dislodged door was on the floor with a perfect imprint of his face on it. In the hallway ahead, he skidded to a halt as the Cupids cheered.
“Good job,” I said. The klaxons went off, the white walls flashing red, and I dashed past him down another identical hallway. “Now do it again!”
↔
Hercules quickly caught up to me—and passed me. He rammed into the door at the end of the next hallway with the same BANG!, like a gun shooting off.
When the door hit the ground, yelling began from the other side.
The klaxons blared and red lights flashed over Hercules as he rose up to his full height, swung the chains dangling from his wrists around with dual clangs and strode into the fray of who-knew-what.
Scientists. Doctors. Soldiers. A bunch of people who hadn’t expected Hercules to knock down their door. Or maybe they had, because I glimpsed him nailing a soldier in the head with one of those chains.
He was using them like extensions of his arms. Man, was he ever. Every time those metal links clashed with a wall—or someone’s face—I flinched. Cupid’s words rose to mind: “He’s the worst enemy you could possibly imagine.”
And the most loyal friend you could ever have, I thought. That was the other part.
The Cupids flew after him, diving into the fray. They didn’t have their bows and arrows, but they sure knew how to use those little fists.
I stood some thirty feet behind, surveying the hallway they had just passed through. The doors here had small rectangular windows, set at the perfect height for someone like me to see through.
And inside the first one lay an empty gurney.
The medical hall.
I darted to each door, staring in. Empty. I ran to the next door. Inside, a pair of scientists crouched amongst all their lab equipment, staring back at me. Neither of them were Justin. But there, on the metal slab beside them, a male centaur lay unzipped from belly to sternum. They were in the midst of dissecting him.
To hell with the World Government. Or wherever it was you went now when you died.
Before I reached the third door, I shifted to a new appearance. I hadn’t shifted since that moment on the train, when I’d opted for no hair at all. Mid-stride, I knew exactly who I needed to be to get around in this place.
I needed to be Serena Russo.
I had been her once before, back at McGill. I’d burnt two months off my life to take on her appearance and infiltrate her office, and at the time I had wondered whether it would be worth the lost life.
Now I knew it had been.
When I reached the last door in the hallway, I had to duck a little to see in the window. Serena was tall, after all—really tall. And I had to tuck that long black hair behind my ear to get it out of my face.
Two doctors stared back at me. In the center of the room sat a medical table with one Justin Truly laid atop it. His head was covered in sticky nodules—an EEG? Were they monitoring his brain waves?
Whatever they had been doing, they wouldn’t be doing it anymore.
I gestured through the window for them to open the door.
One of the doctors stepped forward, hesitated a moment, then pulled the handle. “Dr. Russo,” he said as I passed inside the room. His eyes flitted over my hospital gown.
“Hercules has escaped,” I said. “I think he’ll come for Justin Truly. I need to get him out of here.”
“We’re about to put him under sedation,” the other doctor said. “Should we wheel him out?”
The first doctor was still staring at my hospital gown. He was clueing in to what was going on. “That’s the—”
Justin sat up on the bed, gripping both sides of it, and kicked him in the back. The doctor fell into a metal dresser, medical utensils went flying and Justin caught a scalpel in midair. He swung it around, pointed it at the other doctor. “Get this shit off me,” he called back to me.
I came forward, using my good hand to pull the sticky pads off his head and remove whatever they’d attached to the rest of him. It felt like endless gimmickry, especially with only one working hand to remove it all.
What the hell were they doing with him?
“You’re good,” I said. “Come on.”
Justin rose, the scalpel still pointed at the cowering doctor. “Don’t even think about moving,” he said. “I’ll be watching you. Even when I’m gone.”
It was a hollow threat, but it seemed to work; the doctor let out a little squeak and nodded.
As we came into the hallway and the door shut behind us, I said, “You’ll be watching him?”
He shrugged. “It sounded like a badass thing to say.” He took a second to look me up and down. “Are you OK?”
I made a face. “Not really. I’m running on adrenaline.” Ahead, I could still hear Hercules fighting in the next section of hallway. I grabbed Justin’s hand. “This way.”
“Wait.” He veered us back around to the start of the hall, where a windowless door sat almost abutting the wall. I had missed it completely. “It’s all in here.”
“What’s all in there?”
“Our gear.”
“It’s locked. We need Hercules to get to it.”
A glimmer of mischief entered Justin’s eyes. A second later, he breathed in hard, sighed the air out. “Baby, you don’t need Hercules.” He stepped back a few paces, and just as Hercules had done, he rammed right into the door.
I threw my hands over my mouth, expecting him to splat on it like a bug and fall to the floor, concussed. But that didn’t happen. The door didn’t fly off its hinges as the others had done for Hercules, but it did fly open. Before us lay a closet of a room, and there sat our backpacks and gear on a shelf.
“How did you …”
Justin pointed in Hercules’s direction. At that moment, a roar echoed through the hallway. “I can take on the powers of those nearby, remember? And our demigod is right over there.”
What a hunk, I thought—about both of them.
Justin was already unzipping his backpack, pulling off the gown they’d put him in and dressing in his own clothes. He was pulling on his boots by the time I had unzipped my own backpack.
There lay El Lobizon’s claw, exactly where I’d put it.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway; they sounded like a giant’s. Justin stood, grabbing his
backpack as the footsteps neared and stopped right outside our door.
Hercules stepped into the doorway, dropped the chains he’d been using like whips. He looked from Justin to me. By which I mean, he was looking at Serena Russo.
“You,” he bellowed at me, his gaze darkening.
The three Cupids appeared behind him. “It’s Russo. Get her!”
Chapter 20
Hercules gathered up one of his chains, preparing to snap me clear in half.
Justin tried to step between us. “Stop!”
I threw out my hands. In a second, I shifted back to Hinata’s appearance. “It’s me.”
Hercules redirected the chain in mid-swing, and it swiped through the air past my ear with the high-pitched whine of death. “Isa,” he said. “Why would you choose that face? I nearly split you in two.”
“I had to.” I took a deep breath; I wasn’t in two pieces. “I needed to be her to get to Justin.”
The Cupids flew into the room. “Our bows!” They all raced to the rack where their bows and arrows had been stored, grabbing them up and throwing their quivers over their bodies.
Justin pulled his backpack on. “How many are still out there?”
Hercules’s eyebrows went up. “How many?”
“Soldiers.”
Hercules leaned back into the hallway to check, then back in. “None.”
I paused as I was pulling my pants on. “None?” Justin and I said together.
Hercules shrugged, his chains clinking. “They weren’t very good warriors.”
“And we were very angry,” my Cupid added. “You lock the Cupids in a box, you get the demigods’ fury.”
Justin and I exchanged a look. “There’ll be more,” he said.
I nodded. There would be more.
Daiski.
Daiski was coming. Serena had said he would come for me, and I believed her.
“We need to leave,” I said. “Immediately.”
But instead of moving toward the door, I slumped against the wall. As the adrenaline wore off, a sudden wave of fatigue had overcome me. Not now. Not right now.
“You are not well.” Hercules gestured to my bandaged left hand. “Not at all.”
