The pain overwhelming her, she kicked off with one leg and began to roll, praying with all her might that the fire burning her skin would go out and leave her to die in peaceful agony.
She turned over a full six times before she was spent and could roll no more, landing harshly on her back. Moaning from the pain, she wanted nothing but a sensation of cold to wrap her body in a frozen embrace. Tears streamed freely down either side of her face, dampening her temples and then her hair as one thought consumed her mind.
Whatever that is ... it's not Grant.
It can't be.
She clutched at the bloody skin over her abdomen with her good arm. There had once been a white tank top covering her stomach where the burn was, but now that part of the shirt was gone, stray fibers mingling into the blood of her injuries. Some of her skin burned white hot while other parts had lost all sensation.
Alex felt light-headed. She knew what this was-she was going into shock. She was about to fall asleep.
The world was going to Hell and Grant had been replaced by she-didn't-even-know-what and her skin was burning her alive and yes, how she welcomed the blissful darkness creeping in around her vision. It was the warm embrace of a beloved family member, welcoming her to an eternal rest ...
Moments later, she came to. Only she was no longer prostrate upon the charred earth.
She was upright, and in motion.
Sleepwalking, that's what she was doing. It had to be. She'd passed out and somehow her body was so traumatized from her injuries that her body was doing what came naturally. Her bare feet knew how to pound against the earth, even if it was dark and black and smelled musty and acrid.
But...
Alex willed herself to stop walking, yet she stayed in motion. And her ambling legs were only one part of the problem. Her head wouldn't swivel or tilt, her arms refused to do anything but sway slightly in time with her walking, and she couldn't even wiggle her eyes in their sockets. They remained stubbornly fixed, wide open, pointed straight ahead.
If human beings could be maneuvered by remote control, this was surely what it felt like. Just as these words came to mind, the pain in her abdomen returned full force, and the relentless motion of her body merely aggravated the intensity of the burning sensation on her torso and right arm. But it was useless; she couldn't stop it, couldn't even clutch at her midsection to soothe the pain. She was on autopilot, controlled by some outside force-
Grant.
The Forging.
She just knew. The power that had given Grant the ability to sense the presence of other Ringwearers, and even issue them silent directives, was being twisted into some form of total control over every part of her body.
Between agonizing steps and breaths, she caught sight of the other Ringwearers here in the city-Hector, Nora, Mrs. Edeson, Cornelius, Fletcher, and several others-walking ahead of her, or to the side, or perhaps behind where she couldn't see. She tried to open her mouth, to say something to them, but they continued the same brisk walking pace that she was forced to endure. They were moving toward the exit of the underground city chamber, and though she could only catch the tiniest glimpses of the front of the line so far ahead of her, she was certain it was Grant who was there, setting the pace.
There were others ahead of her in the line, others she didn't recognize. They were well-dressed and looked as though they weren't used to doing this much walking, at this kind of pace, though each of them was bright-eyed and excited. These were the ruling members of the Secretum, she reasoned. There was no one else they could be.
The rest of the group was made up of her fellow Ringwearers, all walking along like lifeless zombies. Just like her.
Alex felt blood trickling down her legs and soaking her jeans. The pain over her stomach felt as if a hot poker were being pressed into her flesh-she would bear permanent scars from an injury this severe, if not worse. And she could feel the blackness creeping in around her senses again, threatening to render her unconscious. The pain she felt was beyond imagination, and even though she had no idea what was happening or why, she knew without a doubt that she would never be allowed to stop and seek desperately needed medical attention.
So she merely walked, allowing the burning to wash over her and through her and hopefully render her unconscious again. She tried to divorce herself of the feeling of marching forward in this obscene procession, moving toward the same entryway that all of them had used just a few hours ago to enter this city from the hidden entrance in the side of the mountain so high above.
One of the last things Alex noted before passing out was the grunting exertions of someone marching right behind her. If she wasn't very much mistaken, it sounded like Payton, moving with a limp, robotic cadence.
She wondered if they were marching to their deaths. Was that where Grant was leading them?
Where else was there to go, in such a state?
Or maybe they were dead already. That's what it felt like.
Maybe she'd died and gone to Hell.
JULIE!
NO!!
Everything around him was black. There was no up or down, no walls or floors or ceiling, no boundaries of any kind. The darkest black he'd ever seen pressed in upon him from all around.
The soul of Grant Borrows was swimming through the ether of existence.
He looked down. He still had his body, but it was different. For one thing, he was naked. To his great astonishment, seeing himself this way didn't feel shameful or out of place. It felt natural. Normal.
His body also seemed to have a faint glow, or a ... shimmer.
Yes, that's what it looked like. He was shimmering.
Full circle. How poetic.
If this was death, he found it unappealing so far.
Was he dead? Is that what this was? Or was it another Secretum ploy?
The last thing he remembered was watching Devlin shoot his sister right before shoving him into a gaping chasm deep beneath the earth. After that, he fell.
He fell, until ...
Well, until he arrived here. Wherever here was.
Oh, Julie ...
His sister was dead, shot in cold blood by Devlin, Keeper of the Secretum of Six. For no other reason than to throw Grant off-balance, no doubt, to make pushing him into that screaming hole all the easier. The entire walk through the Secretum's underground city had been another carefully planned manipulation, right from the start. They abducted Julie to lure him there, and then used her to get him to the innermost heart of their facility, a place Devlin reverentially called "the Hollow."
Julie was the one thing in all the world that he could count on, the one thing in his life that always made sense, always resembled "normal."
But he had failed her, and she was dead.
So, was he dead too?
Grant opened his mouth. "Hello?"
There was no echo, no resonance to the sound whatsoever. He had no sense of the size of the space he was in, nor its depth nor density. His voice was flat and dull, as if the words dissipated into nothing. Perhaps he had heard it, then through the vibrations, felt in his own body.
"Julie?" he called out, raising his voice. It was no use; he could hear himself no differently than before.
He looked around into the aching darkness, knowing he should feel panicked and distressed right now, yet feeling none of these things.
Grant decided to try to reason his way out of his situation.
He had watched Julie die, only seconds ago. The flash of the gun, the surprise in her eyes, the crumpling of her body. He saw that. He knew his sister was dead.
Then, Devlin had shoved him into quite possibly the deepest hole inside the deepest cavern beneath the surface of the earth. How long had he fallen? Thirty seconds? A minute? Five minutes? Longer?
He couldn't say. One moment he was falling, flailing madly into the blackness, and the next moment the rushing of the air passing his ears and the scrapes of his fingers against the sides of the chasm-they all vanished. Perfe
ctly still in the black, he was no longer falling but sort of standing or floating in the middle of absolutely nothing. There were no sounds, no smells, there was nothing touching his skin, and his clothes were gone.
And he was all alone.
"No, you're not."
He spun in place, fast. The whisper had come from behind, but it was in motion, as if made by a passerby on a bicycle. He looked about but saw nothing.
"Who's there?" he tried to call out, but his voice was still muted, as before.
Grant gazed around, taking in the empty darkness that surrounded him, wondering where he was, what was happening, and whose voice was speaking to him. Naked and solitary in the dark, he felt vulnerable, but not in danger.
"The time has come," the voice said, and this time the sound seemed to come from everywhere at once. It sent rippling waves of power through Grant's entire form.
"Time for what?" Grant asked.
"Time for us," the voice replied. "You and I have a great deal to talk about."
Half an hour passed (or maybe it was a hundred years?-it was impossible to tell anymore) and Lisa clung once more to Daniel from behind, through the bars of their cells, as he rested with his back against them. Neither he nor his former lab assistant had spoken in a very long while.
Daniel was consumed with thoughts of an awfully big world out there that they were alone in now-with no help from their superpowered friends-and the knowledge that a secret organization had tried twice to kill him in the last forty-eight hours. Once by impersonating members of the British police, and next by dangling him by the neck from a light fixture. He ignored the strange new sensations that gripped them, as if their movements were happening underwater. It hardly mattered just now.
There was no chance of rest or idle conversation. There was only that desperate clinging to each other.
What an odd road it had been, bringing the two of them here. Daniel was a bookish, late thirty-something lab junkie, hopelessly consumed with his science. Lisa was his erstwhile young assistant, his very own gal Friday. He'd once tried to deny it, tried even to convince himself that he found her plucky charms annoying, but he knew in his heart of hearts that she was his soul's counterpart. They were a perfect team, and a more devoted friend he would never find. She would gladly follow him to the ends of the earth.
And that was where they seemed to be now.
Despite the terrible racket they'd caused freeing Daniel, no guards or policemen had ever shown up. And now they knew why-they could hear it.
Their cells bordered the city streets outside, and beyond those walls they heard the sounds of anarchy. It was like the riot in Los Angeles all over again: screaming, looting, sirens, gunfire.
"Your watch," Lisa mumbled.
"What?" Daniel whispered, his voice still dry and raspy after the hanging.
"Your watch stopped," she replied, slightly loosening the arms that were clasped around his chest.
He glanced down, only vaguely interested. "Huh."
"Batteries?" Lisa asked.
Daniel slowly raised his head. "I don't think the watch is the problem."
Lisa understood. "Yeah, I feel it too. That knot in your stomach? It's like . . ." she grasped for the words.
"Like there's nothing but now," he whispered, finishing the thought for her. "No past or future. It's as if our existence is summed up entirely in today, this hour, this moment. And the moment never passes."
Lisa swallowed, listening to the riotous sounds outside again. "How's that possible? And what's going on out there? What's happening to us?"
Daniel knew Lisa meant more than the two of them alone in their cells. "I don't have any answers," he sighed. "Not anymore. We're venturing way outside the realm of science here, or even para-science. Everything I know tells me that what we're experiencing is categorically impossible. Time is a constant; it's one of the few unchanging laws of the universe. Even when it's curved due to the effects of gravity, it still exists and its effects are bound by the laws of science. It's predictable, it's bankable. It's the fourth dimension, and it's how we measure any and all change. If time has somehow been removed from the equation, then I wonder what other scientific laws have been broken ..."
"All bets are off," Lisa offered.
He wiggled free from her grasp to turn around and face her, a quizzical expression on his face, as if he was trying to remember something.
"That's what you told me," she explained, "back when everything first began. Remember that day when Grant first breached the Threshold? You said that all bets were off."
Daniel regarded her for a moment. "You think Grant is responsible for what's happening?"
There was no hesitation in her reply. "I think you were closer to the truth than you knew."
"If we could just get out of here, maybe we could. . ." Daniel sighed and leaned back again, allowing her to hold him.
Part of Daniel couldn't believe he was allowing himself such an open display of affection. That wasn't like him; he was stuffy and professional, though not without his own charms, but he never betrayed his true feelings so freely. But things had changed now, hadn't they?
After their conversation the previous night, after his admissions of guilt and her-well, what had she admitted, exactly? That she'd secretly funded his research for years? That she had ulterior motives for doing so-motives that if he couldn't grasp on his own, she didn't know if she could express?
Another unmeasured expanse of time passed between them in silence. Never once did Lisa let go, holding on to him fiercely. The way a drowning man holds a plank of wood. But he was the one sinking. He was the one who'd brought so much pain into her life. Pains he himself had suffered and then vicariously inflicted upon her ...
The brutal street-corner beating that had nearly claimed his life, leaving permanent damage and impairing his ability to walk ... Taking the life of a hateful, vindictive man that the law could never touch, and then having to live with the overbearing guilt the murder caused ... The Secretum attempting to take his life just hours ago, by hanging ...
So much had happened to him-to them-and he'd given her so many reasons to walk away. He'd never tried to intentionally push her away, but he couldn't have planned a better way of accomplishing it.
And yet she was still here, holding him as if there were nowhere else she'd rather be.
Daniel had told her once the story of his youth, when he was often getting hurt but would always manage to bounce back. And even now, he had bounced back again. He'd even come to terms with his mistakes and made an admission of guilt. With this clearing of his conscience, his long-missing confidence seemed to be returning by the moment.
Daniel wondered if he was an evil man. He was a murderer; there was no doubt about that, even if the man he'd killed had definitely deserved it. But still he felt the death, as though he had willed death upon that vile man without the use of a gun. He'd enjoyed it, but it hollowed him out. He knew even as he was doing it that the ends didn't justify the means, but at the time, he didn't care.
He cared now. He'd explained all of this to Lisa last night, and he longed for someone to condemn him, to confirm that he was the evil man he knew in his heart he was. But instead, she'd said three words that he was not prepared for.
I forgive you.
What an absurd thing for her to say. He hadn't shot her in the head. Why should her forgiveness make any difference?
But even as he thought of these things, his eyes moistened again. It was such a remarkable thing, those three little words. They had unmade him.
Lisa sniffled quietly to herself from behind him, and he suddenly wondered if her thoughts were lingering on the same things that his were.
"I love you," she whispered. He hadn't moved in quite a while, enjoying the feeling of her arms wrapped around him, so she probably assumed he was asleep.
Daniel's heart lurched, and several moments passed as Daniel debated whether or not to reply, or acknowledge that he'd heard her.
&n
bsp; Finally he could take it no more. He stirred, slowly loosening himself from her grip and turning to face her. Shame was etched across his features, along with no small amount of alarm.
Lisa reeled backward on her hands and feet. Her eyes looked ready to pop, and her mouth fell open.
Daniel shook his head miserably, struggling to find words, any words at all. "I'm ... But ... I'm a murderer. And a coward," he said, his raspy voice barely audible. "I don't deserve you. How could you possibly ... ? Why ... ?"
Tears fell unrestrained from Daniel's eyes as Lisa suddenly relaxed and smiled as if relieved and thrilled and utterly calm all at once. She nudged herself up against the bars again and took his hands. "Because the choice is mine to make," she replied. "And I've made it."
Ethan Cooke wiped sweat away from his face, glanced up, and read a stamped beam above his seat, printed with the words Conveyor Pod #168. Already the black opalescent Pod-big enough to carry twenty or more, though he was alone on this trip-rocketed through the Secretum's underground electromagnetic tunnel system at a bullet's pace.
The Pod was circular in shape, but flattened like a straw on its side that's been pressed down. There was nothing terribly eye-catching about the vehicle other than its sleek, futuristic design-a stark contrast to what he'd seen of the subterranean city where the Secretum lived, with its ancient architecture and caveman feel. Comfortable seats were stationed in simple rows; he sat near the vehicle's front, a single knee bobbing up and down anxiously. There was no pilot or cockpit; the Pod was entirely automated. All he had to do was enter and select his Entry Node destination from a screen at the front of the passenger area that listed all possible destinations, and he was off.
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