Chaos

by Lanie Bross

  But he was tired of rules.

  The archer was in the small flap pocket of his backpack. He gripped it in his hand and watched the figure spin. He needed guidance. Would it work this time? He focused on Corinthe, her face, her eyes, the fiery yearning in his gut.

  Time, he thought. Show me to the tunnels of time.

  Instead, the tides around him swirled faster, more violently. It felt as though the universe was fighting him, and Luc struggled to keep his balance, to keep from panicking. He barely kept his grip on the archer. He clenched his teeth against the pain. Winds buffeted him sideways, turned him around in circles.

  The tiny archer continued to spin wildly. There was no doorway, no ripple that might indicate a new world. It was all just colors and winds, an endless stream flowing in multiple directions.

  The trinket was useless.

  The Crossroad was useless.

  Anger rose in him, swift and hot. He wouldn’t let the Unseen Ones win. All he wanted to do was save Corinthe. Why was the universe fighting him so hard? Love was supposed to triumph over everything. Wasn’t that what everyone always said?

  So why the hell wasn’t it working for him?

  The archer was still spinning. Enraged, Luc threw it.

  And watched as, instead of disappearing, the tiny arrow pierced the shifting wall of color and hung there, trembling.

  All at once, the winds quieted.

  The colors stopped spinning.

  It was silent.

  The archer was stuck as if buried in bubble gum. When Luc reached out and pulled it, long strands of fibrous color dripped from the tip of the tiny arrow. Black, inklike shadows dripped from the spot where the arrow had been embedded, as if the Crossroad were weeping.

  Luc tucked the archer into his backpack and examined the tear. It was barely the size of a pinprick, but behind it, he could hear sounds—not whispers, but a faint humming, like the noise of some enormous generator. He stuck a finger through the hole and tugged, and the rip grew longer. Luc was repelled by the slow ooze of black liquid from the opening, but he didn’t stop.

  The Crossroad, Corinthe had told him, ran everywhere, between all worlds.

  So what ran behind the Crossroad?

  When the opening was the width of his shoulders, Luc carefully maneuvered his head through it. Bright blue lights sizzled along tracks that reminded him of the sparks that rained down continuously in Kinesthesia.

  The last time he and Corinthe had been there, the world had started to collapse around them. Luc wondered if it was even there anymore. Could the universe survive without its center?

  Luc shook his head. This was not Kinesthesia; there was no gigantic clock, no grid, no river of metal.

  There were just … wires. That was what they looked like, wires. Everywhere. They ran as far as he could see in both directions. Bursts of bright color zipped along them in rapid intervals.

  The air was charged with electricity and the hair on his arms stood all the way up. It was like the time he’d gone to the science museum in seventh grade and put his hands on a glowing static ball, but a thousand times that. Ten thousand. The pressure grew. It felt like his skin was crawling with a thousand bugs.

  He wanted out.

  But when he went to retreat, the opening gripped him, like a mouth closing. The Crossroad was healing itself, he realized with a sense of nausea; fibrous strands of color were weaving around him like skin regenerating, trapping him in place.

  In the world beyond the Crossroad, the world of wires, Luc noticed thick cables knotted only a foot or so away. He plunged an arm through the hole and reached out to grab the nearest cable. It was as thick as his wrist. He checked his grip and heaved.

  The cable snapped, sending off a waterfall of sparks. Luc smelled burning flesh and wondered, briefly, whether he was on fire. Then he realized he was smelling the Crossroad, the stink of the hole widening to release him, opening its jaw.

  A million pinpricks of light pierced Luc’s body, until the pain became too much, and he simply let go.

  Jasmine slowly sat up. She was in the middle of the rotunda, surrounded by debris: tumbled columns, mounds of plaster and Sheetrock. The last thing she remembered was falling. She knew she’d hit her head, but when she felt around for a bump, she found nothing. She didn’t even have a headache.

  Ford was gone. Her attackers were gone, too. Maybe Ford had chased them off?

  “Are you okay?”

  Jasmine looked up at the figure that spoke. An older woman with graying hair looked down at her, her face filled with concern. On her jacket was a tag that said RED CROSS VOLUNTEER.

  The woman moved to help her, but Jas scrambled to her feet.

  “I’m fine,” she said quickly. She noticed that the entrance to the underground room had been covered over again. Was Ford responsible for that, too?

  Had she blacked out again?

  Panic crashed over her in a wave. Jesus. There was something really wrong with her.

  “There’s an ambulance in the parking lot,” the woman was saying. “Maybe we should check you out.”

  “I really am fine,” Jasmine insisted, backing away. At the edge of the rotunda, she turned and staggered down the path. The woman called out to her, but she kept going.

  Jasmine’s vision was blurry, uneven. Her hands shook and her knees felt like Jell-O.

  She sank down onto a bench, remarkably still intact, at the end of the pathway. Was this why Mom started using drugs, to stop an endless loop of craziness? Had she gone through this too? Did she forget things, find herself places she never remembered going to?

  But Jas did remember.

  Jas remembered discovering the strange room; she remembered meeting Ford. She remembered, too, a note on the table, a message scrawled in her own handwriting. More craziness. And then she’d been attacked again. She’d been followed.

  But it all came back to the same question: why?

  A prickly feeling on her neck grew stronger and she turned. A man with piercing blue eyes stood on the other side of the pond watching her. Or was he watching the swan swimming among the fallen trees along the water’s edge?

  Jasmine stood up. She suddenly felt exposed, and she unconsciously tugged down her shirt. What if she was being observed, even now? She hurried down the path to the street. A siren started wailing and soon a fire truck zoomed past, disappearing around the corner. She clamped her hands over her ears. Still, sounds penetrated: hissing from a broken pipe; people crying, calling out names; all punctuated by the constant wail of sirens, near and far.

  What was happening to her? She staggered along the sidewalk, her hands still covering her ears to block out some of the sounds. They crashed into her, added to the chaos in her head. She couldn’t think straight.

  Where was she going now?

  She had to find Luc.

  She fumbled in her pocket for her cell, then remembered that she’d lost it somewhere after she blacked out Friday night.

  There had to be some place around where she could make a quick call. She needed to hear his voice, to tell him what had happened. She needed him to tell her she wasn’t going crazy.

  She hurried south down Baker, toward the bus stop that would take her home. It wasn’t until she got there that she realized her bag was gone. She had no money, no metro card. Had she been robbed, too?

  She took a deep breath. She had to focus. She searched her pockets and found a couple of crumpled dollar bills—enough to pay her fare to the next connect, anyway.

  The ride down Divisadero was bumpy, and after the second time her forehead slammed into the window, Jas had to stop leaning against it. The coolness had felt good; without it, the noise around her crept back in, loud and overbearing. The stale air made her feel like she was suffocating.

  She tried covering her ears, tried humming, counting backward, but nothing helped. It was the enclosed space, the confinement that made it worse. She staggered to her feet and toward the front of the bus and climbed off at
the very next stop.

  It didn’t matter where she was, it only mattered that she could breathe fresh air again. When she did, the faint undercurrent of something familiar tickled her nose.

  She tilted her head and closed her eyes, trying to pinpoint what it was. Then, over the scent of smoke and oil from the machines sending black smoke into the air, she found it.

  Her pulse leapt with excitement. She could smell pine and leather, a strange combination, for sure. There was something else, too, something harder to pick up on, but it was there.

  She moved without realizing it, led only by her senses and a vague memory. It wasn’t fear that had her skirting a pile of bricks covering the sidewalk, that kept her going forward despite the destruction around her; it was something else. Something that made her skin tighten and her breath catch in her throat.

  Anticipation.

  Like she stood perched on the edge of a cliff with nothing below her.

  There was no reason to trust that she was heading in the right direction, but it felt right, connected to everything else. At the corner of Jackson she stopped. The aroma was stronger there, and she slowly looked around to find the source.

  A small sign in hand-painted yellow letters hung over a nondescript wooden door. It read CATHEDRAL STREET. Ford had been wearing a shirt with the same name. It hit her with startling clarity. The scent. It was his.

  And whatever this place was, it had to be connected to him, too.

  She opened the door and stepped into a dimly lit hallway. From inside she could hear grunts and voices and the muffled sound of something—or someone—being hit. She thought of the two people who’d attacked her. Had Ford brought them here? Was he in trouble?

  Were they?

  At the end of the hallway, a smudged door opened onto a boxing ring. Two people were circling the ring, sparring, occasionally throwing punches, while a man leaned on the ropes, yelling instructions. Heavy bags hung from the rafters, and a tiny older woman was pummeling the hell out of one of them.

  A kid Jasmine’s age was sitting behind a huge desk next to the door, and he waved her in with indifference, his gaze barely lifting from the magazine he was reading. She stepped farther into the room and saw, painted on the floor, a large circle with two crossed boxing gloves and the words CATHEDRAL STREET across them, just like on the T-shirt Ford had been wearing.

  As if thinking about him made him materialize, Ford emerged from the locker rooms. He was wearing athletic shorts and sneakers and no shirt. She hadn’t realized before how in shape he was; he had the body of a serious athlete. She noticed he wasn’t bruised at all—obviously, he had escaped Jas’s attackers fairly easily. He was walking next to a big guy with the face of a bulldog.

  Jasmine dropped to her knees in front of the welcome desk, pretending to tie her shoe. Though she had come hoping to find him, now she felt as if she was spying on him. Had he seen her? She didn’t think so. When she peeked up, his back was to her.

  “So this is the main floor,” the bulldog-looking guy was saying. “You can see that we’re pretty straightforward here. No treadmills or fancy equipment. Old-school, you could call it. Our clients are pretty hard-core, too. Even the earthquake yesterday didn’t stop us for more than a few hours.” The guy pointed to the ring, where the trainer was demonstrating a right-hook technique. “Since this is your first time training here, you get a free T-shirt.”

  Bulldog gestured to the guy behind the desk, and, barely looking up from his magazine, the guy tossed Ford a yellow Cathedral Street T-shirt from a stack. “You can start on the basic bag today, loosen up, test it out. We have pay-as-you-go pricing, but if you decide to commit, we can put you on a monthly training schedule. Just depends on what you’re looking to do.”

  Jas moved onto her second shoe, untying and retying it as slowly as humanly possible. It didn’t make sense; the trainer was obviously confused. The earthquake had happened two days ago, on Saturday.

  “I’ll just start with the day option for now,” Ford replied. “Not sure how long I’ll be here.”

  “You just move to town?”

  “Just this morning, yeah. Hell of a welcome.”

  Jasmine’s face was burning. Was Ford lying to the trainer? He couldn’t have gotten into town this morning, because she had run into him at the rotunda last night. And what about the T-shirt? He’d been wearing it at the rotunda. Hadn’t he?

  She didn’t understand. Her head was spinning and the smell of sweat and varnish was making her nauseous. And there were only so many times you could tie and untie your laces.

  She straightened up. Now Ford was on a bag, running through moves that the trainer called out. The muscles in his back rippled with every punch.

  “You’ve done this before,” the trainer commented. “Nice form.”

  She knew she had to make a choice: approach Ford and ask him what had happened at the rotunda, or leave. She couldn’t just stand there. But she found she couldn’t take her eyes off him. He moved lightly, almost as if he were dancing. He wasn’t even breaking a sweat.

  The guys in the ring watched him, too, while they wrestled out of their gloves and scrubbed their faces with towels. Soon they ducked out of the ring and headed to the locker room, and the woman stopped pummeling her bag and turned, wiping her face with her forearm.

  “Hey, Nick, I need to square up with you today,” the woman called out.

  “Keep working on the uppercut,” the trainer told Ford. Then he and the woman headed straight for Jasmine. Crap. When the trainer spotted her, he stopped short. “Can I help you?” he grunted.

  Jas gave him her best I’m-innocent smile. “Oh, sorry. I was looking for Dave?” She pulled a name out of the air. “He said he was coming to meet me here?”

  “No trainers named Dave here,” the guy said. “We got a Steve, but he’s not on schedule today.”

  “That’s it. Steve.” She pouted. “I was sure he was going to be here.”

  “Give me a second. Gotta take care of some housekeeping, then I can call him.”

  “Thanks so much,” she said. As soon as the trainer and the older woman moved into the office, Jas started moving toward Ford. He must have answers for her. He was her only hope.

  They were alone in the gym now, except for the guy behind the desk. Ford started pummeling the bag, his hands moving so fast they were practically a blur. Jas had never seen anything like it. Her breath caught in her throat. He ducked and dodged and twisted. Still, he wasn’t sweating.

  She felt strangely frightened of him. When he stopped moving, it took her a second to find her voice.

  In that second, he threw one more punch.

  The bag exploded. Sand went everywhere. Jasmine covered her mouth to keep from crying out. Impossible.

  “Shit,” Ford muttered. Jasmine ducked behind a row of kettlebells. Earlier, at the rotunda, he’d seemed harmless. Helpful, even. But what if he wasn’t harmless? What if he was in league with the people who’d attacked her, somehow? Maybe the whole thing had been a setup.

  “What the hell happened here?” The trainer burst out of the office and charged over to Ford.

  “I—I’m sorry,” Ford stammered. He did look sorry. “I can pay you back.”

  Jas backed up slowly; as soon as she reached the hallway, she turned and ran, hurtling herself out the door. The desk guy was talking on his cell phone outside and barely looked at her. She crossed the street quickly and took up a spot behind a parked car. She felt like a creep, but she also felt, in the same intuitive way she’d been feeling things since she woke up, that Ford had something to do with her attackers.

  And Miranda. How did Miranda fit in?

  She watched Ford push open the door. For a moment he hesitated, and his gaze swung in her direction. She ducked, concealing herself behind the car. When she straightened up again, Ford was halfway down the street.

  She tugged up her hood and followed him at a distance. She didn’t know what she was hoping to find, but Ford must be conne
cted to the attack at the rotunda. How else could she explain the note, and the fact that he’d abandoned her there and chased off her pursuers?

  She was so intent on keeping him in her sights—he moved quickly, head down, hands stuffed in his pockets—she barely noticed they were passing close to the hospital where her dad was staying. Just ahead was Alta Plaza Park and the thick grove of trees where she’d been attacked. She sped up, as if she could outrun the memory.

  “You’re supposed to block the ball, you shithead!” a voice shouted. There was a loud explosion of laughter.

  Jasmine felt a flickering sense of unease. Familiar. Everything was very familiar.

  She turned and saw Tyler, Justin, and Devon, Luc’s friends, kicking a ball. They were wearing the same clothes they’d had on yesterday, when she’d also seen them kicking a ball, in the very same park, at the very same time of day.

  This time, though, they spotted her.

  “Jas. What’s up?” Tyler called out. He tossed the ball to Justin and jogged over to her. She glanced down Jackson and saw a yellow shirt—Ford—duck into a building at the corner. She couldn’t lose him.

  “Hi, Tyler.” She waved and tried to keep moving, but he caught up with her this time.

  “Hey, wait up. I’ve been trying to call Luc all weekend. Is he okay?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Why wouldn’t he be okay?” she asked cautiously. Did Tyler know that Luc had gone looking for her attackers?

  “Well, you know.” Tyler looked uncomfortable. “Because of everything that happened at Karen’s party.”

  Jasmine didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. He didn’t know anything. She shrugged. “He didn’t say anything to me about it.”

  Tyler looked down at his shoes. “Yeah, well, I probably wouldn’t want to talk about it either, if I caught my girlfriend—” He broke off suddenly.

  “Caught my girlfriend what?” Jasmine said. She was curious, even though it shouldn’t have mattered; she had never liked Karen and had never understood how Luc could date someone whose idea of a deep conversation was a ninety-minute discussion about which bikini to take on vacation.