by Sean Platt
Heather clawed herself mostly upright, again peeking out into the gathering. She felt like a woman who’d nearly stepped onto a rattlesnake then pulled her foot away purely by chance a second before it was too late.
But when she looked again at the placid white forms below, watching them turn toward the voice — Raj and others, it looked like — Heather didn’t see more becoming the black-scaled monsters as her mind had already imagined.
Instead, she saw the Titans flinching.
Then they started to swat — first at the air, as if bothered by flies, then at each other. The sight was almost comical.
“It’s back,” Coffey said.
Heather glanced up at Andreus, who looked puzzled, both by her statement and the disconcertingly chaotic scene unfolding before them. There was nothing to cause the commotion.
Then Heather turned her head. Watched from the corner of her eye. And saw it happen.
The shadow thing had spread wide, now slithering beneath the Titan group like fog. It covered their legs. It rose, burying them to the waists. It pulsed and swayed from group to group, inciting unrest. Near Raj, the Titan-turned-Reptar charged, rearing, looking for a beautiful second like it might bite Raj in two. Then one of the Titans tackled it, taking it down, into the black soup.
Fighting began.
When the blindness came, it was total, for Heather as for them all.
CHAPTER 69
Christopher’s hand found Lila’s before the sun died. Then the light was gone, and it was all she could feel.
“Lila!”
“I’m here.” She kept her voice calm, but it was as if her eyes had stopped working. She couldn’t see a thing. Whatever this was, it had come all at once. She’d thought she’d sensed motion in the corner of her eye, but when she’d looked toward the sparring Titans she’d seen nothing. They were fighting over a thing that didn’t exist. Waving phantom insects away.
But then she’d seen it.
Everyone had spied it plain as day, not from the corner of eyes but right in front of them. Lila could tell by the screams.
She looked up. Looked down. There was nothing at all, as if the world had disappeared.
“Can you see?” Christopher asked. He was close. Inches from her face. She could feel his harsh exhales as the tumult ahead, entirely unseen, grew louder. She could hear … well, not screams, precisely. But grunts. Noises like animals.
“I can’t see anything at all,” Lila said.
“Where are the others?”
“Lila? Is that you?”
Piper, to her right.
Panic choked Lila’s heart like a fist as an unknown dawned: “Where is Clara?”
“I saw her run. She ran.” Piper’s voice was throaty and rushed. Stronger than she normally seemed.
“Where?”
“Clara is okay.”
Lila felt something break inside. “How do you know that? We have to find her!”
A woman’s hand touched Lila’s — soft, assured, in no way hesitant. As if Piper wasn’t blind and could still see the world. “She’s okay.”
Something in Piper’s voice soothed Lila’s fear.
“We have to go,” Piper said.
“Where?”
“Away.”
“I … I can’t see.”
“I know,” Piper’s voice said. “That was his intention.”
Lila wanted to ask about that, but Piper’s hand tightened and pulled. Lila had already lost her bearings; she only knew that the other hand in hers — mute, waiting to follow — seemed to be Christopher. Who else had been in their party? Cameron, Terrence, and Captain Jons? They were on their own. They had to be.
“Come on,” Piper said.
“We have to find Clara.”
“Not now. Come on, Lila.” Pressure intensified, but Lila’s feet were planted. She couldn’t see the street. Or the sky. She thought she could hear Raj ahead, and could certainly hear the sounds of thrashing and shredding. Were the others even there? It was only Titans and a single Reptar. What was happening up there? And where was Clara? Piper’s hand pulled one direction, but Lila had lost her orientation. Which way was backward? Which was ahead? Was Piper pulling Lila toward her daughter or away?
“Come on. Now.”
“No!”
Lila dug in her heels, finding scrabbling purchase on footing she couldn’t see. Her hand slipped away; her momentum hurled her forward, and she struck the ground hard. Christopher’s hand had stayed where it was, and within seconds Piper was on her again, just as assured, yanking harder.
“Come with me, Lila.”
Piper pulled.
Christopher shifted around and tugged as well, now from the same direction. Lila felt betrayal flood her. She couldn’t just go. Clara was out there, somewhere, alone.
Lila screamed.
But inch by inch, she went.
There was a heaving, crushing sensation as Christopher seemed to pick her up. To shift his grip to Piper’s hand instead of Lila’s. She thrashed on his shoulder in a blind fireman’s carry.
Piper led.
Christopher followed.
And foot by unseen foot, they fled.
CHAPTER 70
Raj was flat on the ground.
Miraculously, nobody had stepped on him. He couldn’t see a thing; it was as if he’d been struck over the head and lost his sense of sight. And that made sense. It even explained why no one had crushed him. There wasn’t anything wrong with the air. That was absurd. No, this was only happening to him. Only to Raj, as usual.
But no. That wasn’t true. He sat up then voiced a girlish scream as some fool’s foot finally trod on his palm. He heard the someone stumble and fall. There had been a clutch of garbage cans beside them when they’d entered the Apex courtyard; maybe the hand stepper had fallen into that.
It wasn’t just him.
He could hear Piper and Lila somewhere behind. Possibly Christopher. As he came upright, his hand hit something like a close-cropped hedge: Terrence’s giant hair, possibly. But it was on the ground, as Raj had been. Everyone had flinched when the Reptar had come forward then staggered away when the Titan, of all things, had taken it down. Raj hadn’t understood that, but he’d been grateful. Then the world’s lights had been extinguished.
“Jons!” Raj called out.
Nothing. Just grunting, struggling, and the sounds of thrashing teeth. Claws and feet and things run into, spilled to the ground. Was he in a cloud? How large was it? The darkness was absolute. Everyone close enough to hear sounded uncertain, hard on their feet, vocalizing (Astrals) or yelling (humans) as if trying to find their bearings.
But wait.
Wait.
He could see something after all.
Compared to the black ink Raj saw everywhere else, the dim gray shapes to his left looked almost transparent. In that direction, at least, the fog was thinning. He looked back to verify, judged it to be the way they’d come from. The way, if he’d been hearing right, that Lila and Piper had gone. The clear patch was ahead. Clearer, anyway.
Despite the situation, despite the peril, Raj couldn’t resist a smile. Fucking Lila had gone the wrong way. She’d gone into the soup, instead of away.
The parted area was narrow. Almost artificial. On both sides was a churning wall of nothingness. Down the center was barely better — gnarled with shadow. But he could almost see, like a person with their eyes adjusted to darkness.
Ahead, at the end of the tunnel, Raj could see the silhouette of someone beckoning.
He moved closer.
And saw Meyer Dempsey, waving him forward like a guide.
CHAPTER 71
Nathan hadn’t moved. He couldn’t see a thing. He stared into the empty pit of a black hole.
He had no idea if this was what Heather and Jeanine had claimed to see earlier. Regardless, his eyes had learned the trick of seeing it now. The women had reacted. Nathan had kept his eyes forward, held to the Apex, watching the Titan heads turn and
doubting they could see him anyway. Then came the cloud, now dark pillars like the arms of a giant black squid. By the time it reached him, he’d decided it was over. They’d die here. And that would be fine.
Then the blindness.
Heather’s scream. Coffey’s almost-cry and nervous twitters. Shouts and scuffles of the group behind him — steeled less than Nathan might have hoped, for soldiers.
Someone pawed at his side, hands like claws. Grabbing like a drowning person, trying to drag him down, to use Nathan as a life raft. He cuffed the hand away.
“Have some dignity, Heather,” he said, fighting his own panic. The world had become a sensory deprivation chamber — a sight deprivation chamber, anyway. He was wearing an impossible blindfold, trapped in an old chest freezer that latched from the outside. Buried alive. But he held it all in. He focused ahead, as if there was something to see.
But the grunted response wasn’t Heather.
“Coffey. Where are you?”
“I can’t — ” came her reply.
“I know you can’t! Do you have a weapon?”
“Yes … ” deep breath, “Yes, sir.”
“Where is Heather?”
“I don’t know.” Then: “It’s happening again. They’re turning. Can you hear it?”
He could: the soundtrack of Cottonwood Canyon with the lights off.
“This is your shadow,” he said.
He thought she might protest. Might say it couldn’t be — and if she had, Nathan would almost agree. He hadn’t seen the shadow, but he couldn’t help but see this.
“I think it is,” came Coffey’s breathless reply.
“Then we have to go in while they’re distracted. You said the shadow was helping us.”
“But I can’t see anything at — ”
Coffey stopped speaking just as Nathan saw the narrow, barely visible passage blooming ahead through the blackness.
CHAPTER 72
Heather followed the silhouette at the end of the long, shadowy passageway. She recognized everything about it — and seeing it now, Heather knew she hadn’t truly been seeing it for a very long time.
“Meyer!” she called.
But the silhouette didn’t turn. She could barely see the thing. It had broad shoulders that seemed a bit too pointed, as if part of the shape came from clothing, surely a suit. There was no light in the air. Only a slight retreat of darkness. And except for the slightest hints of movements ahead, Heather saw nothing.
“Wait for me!”
Not Meyer as she’d seen him earlier today.
And not, interestingly, Meyer as she’d seen him before he’d been murdered — which, she felt sure, he most certainly had.
This was Meyer from before. From back when they were married. From when they both lived in LA and New York. When the world had been their oyster. Maybe before Piper, maybe after. But Meyer. His walk was impossible to miss. How could she have ever been fooled? Nobody moved like Meyer. Nobody navigated life like the man she’d never stopped loving.
Somehow, the Meyer she’d spoken to earlier wasn’t really Meyer. Because he was dead, because Raj had killed him.
But this Meyer was even more real than the man who’d died in her arms. The one who’d bled on her clothes. The one who’d said, with his dying breath (and here, she didn’t want to consider that he might have been less than real) that he loved her.
Heather could barely see her footing. She could hear all sorts of conflict surrounding her, but none had entered the strange corridor. It was, visually speaking, just Heather and her ex.
He turned. She couldn’t see his face, but she saw the shift of his shoulders, the cocky certainty of his stance.
From far away, he seemed to wave for her to follow. To hurry.
She ran, and the tunnel collapsed behind her, driving her down some unknown throat.
CHAPTER 73
Drag her.
Piper heard his voice. She looked up, and he was closer. Though she could barely see him, Piper could feel him just fine. She could sense familiar essence wafting off his body like heat.
Lila was screaming, thrashing. Pure panic. “They’re going to kill her!”
Piper saw Christopher flinch. His eyes were wide and unfocused. Christopher, Piper decided, was as blind as Lila. She could reach right out and smack his face, and he wouldn’t see it coming. Piper could let go of them both then circle the pair in the gloom. It was hard to see much beyond simple shadowy shapes, but she doubted they saw even that.
Lila didn’t see her father. Or hear him. The shape and voice was for Piper’s eyes only — more connection than reality. More memory than substance.
She doesn’t understand, Meyer told her.
Piper looked up at him. She couldn’t see any of his features. He was a mask of nothing. She saw his shape and heard his voice in the recesses of her mind. She wanted to reply. But Lila was frightened enough.
None of them understood. None of them could. Piper had sampled the Astral mind — not with Cameron when they’d passed the double line of monoliths, but when she’d been on the mothership. When she’d stood across the partition from Meyer, untangling a way to save them. When she’d felt his mind in its truest form and felt how it touched the others. How it made them uneasy and forced them to hesitate.
We will dock, the entity that Meyer had called Divinity said.
But then another part of Divinity’s voice — one that Meyer’s doubt had infected, replied, But we will send you down first.
Compromise. Uncertainty. The difficulties of a singular mind. She could sense the group mind’s bafflement over them both — the way they were nuts with unbroken shells, their thoughts only their own. A million sprites seemed to circle them like an invisible cyclone, trying to puzzle them out, working to believe that two people could survive with nothing between them, each living solely inside their own skull.
Now, watching the shape at the end of the tunnel, Piper understood.
Meyer had never returned. Something else had.
He’d never betrayed them. Without even meaning to, Meyer had always helped them.
“I want Cameron to go with us,” she told the shape.
“What?” Christopher said from behind.
But Piper’s eyes stayed on the shape in the gloom. Meyer but not Meyer. Him but not him.
The shape nodded.
It understood. Of course it did.
On the wind, Piper heard, Wait.
CHAPTER 74
Heather’s reaching hand struck something that felt like dirt or stone. She blinked. She was facing a wall dug out of something; that much was suddenly obvious.
She turned, still in the gloom and able to see almost nothing. But then she saw Meyer — not in front of her as she’d thought, but off to her right, in some sort of chamber. The tunnel through the black was wrong. Now her inability to see made sense. She wasn’t mystically blind, with a clear passage through the phenomenon’s center. Now she couldn’t see because she was in a dark place, like a tomb. Or a crypt.
Meyer flicked on a tiny light. It cut a beam through the darkness, and Heather found herself staring into a starburst that threatened to blind her again.
“Heather?” he said.
But his voice was wrong.
“Who the hell is that?” Heather demanded.
The light flicked toward the holder’s face. It was Cameron Bannister. He looked the same as he had two years ago: still just as young, just as untidy in clothing and hair. She had a strange urge to turn away, embarrassed. She’d been so sure he’d been Meyer. Heather felt like her punctured heart was bleeding all over her sleeve.
“How did you get here?”
“I could ask you the same question,” Cameron replied.
“Not fair that you had a light. I was walking blind.”
Cameron seemed as disoriented as she felt. “It didn’t work before.” He shook his head, shining the penlight through the room. The walls were rock and filth. The air was stale — som
ething Heather now realized she’d been smelling and tasting on the back of her tongue for a while. She’d been walking down. Zigzagging. Where Meyer had led, she’d followed.
Cameron was searching corners. There was a passageway behind her and one behind him. He shone his light into both. There was also a plinth of some sort in the room’s center. It looked almost like a fountain, but there was no water. Just a perfectly round, shallow basin.
“What are you looking for?”
“Did anyone pass you just now?” Cameron asked. “Did you feel anyone run by, up that passage?”
“No.” In truth, Heather felt like she was shedding a dream and barely trusted her feet. “Why?”
“I … ” Cameron paused, probably unsure if he should continue. “I could have sworn there was someone ahead of me. I was following him.”
“Who?”
“It was hard to see, but … ” A shake of the head. “I thought it was Viceroy Dempsey.”
Heather looked up. “Where are we?”
Cameron ran a hand over the rock wall. “I think we’re under the Apex.” He shone the light around again then located a small stone stage against the far wall, covered in otherworldly glyphs. Cameron had seen it before in a photo with a tablet computer leaning against it, proclaiming Device missing.
He moved closer.
“What?” Heather asked.
Cameron stooped. Ran his fingers across the stone. “I’ve seen this before.”
A pebble struck the floor to her left. Heather looked over then back to Cameron. Then there was another small plink, and she looked over again.
Cameron stood, and they approached the plinth. With the small depression in the center, like a fountain without water. A depression with a curious black shadow now sliding from it, its job of attracting their attention duly finished.
“What is it?” Heather asked.
Cameron reached into the satchel at his side.
