The Perilous In-Between

by Cortney Pearson

  Victoria swallowed, analyzing each pair of eyes. Bronwyn’s were hard and insistent. Emma’s hopeful. Orpha nodded again, and Aline lifted the headgear higher.

  Their confidence and insistence spread chills down Victoria’s arms, touching her to the very center. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “That’s a first,” Bronwyn said with a snigger. “How about ‘mount up’?”

  A smile spread across Victoria’s cheeks. Emma and Orpha smiled too, and Victoria took the headgear from Aline, who grinned and hugged her. Soon they were all hugging her, letting out little squeals of delight.

  “Midnight it is!” Bronwyn shouted just as the siren broke through the air.

  Emma’s eyes widened, and Victoria shot a panicked glance to the pocket watch on its chain at her belt. “It’s only eleven o’clock,” she whispered.

  “I thought you said midnight,” said Orpha, covering her ears.

  “Apparently, it’s now!” Victoria shouted, placing her headpiece in her ear. “Ladies? Mount up!”

  The girls whooped in determination. Victoria watched as each opened her hangar and guided her plane out. Soon they were soaring above her.

  She watched them with longing.

  “You coming, Digby?” Bronwyn’s deep voice bellowed in her ear, striking sense into her.

  A hovney puttered up the road, swirling dust beneath its underbelly. “Right behind you,” she said, waving it down.

  “Let’s get you to shelter!” the driver shouted, but Victoria grasped his arm before he could close her door.

  “Take me to the beach!” she shouted over the siren.

  The driver’s face paled. “Are you mad?”

  She reached beneath the bench, shoved the gas mask against his chest and snarled, “The beach, sir. Now!”

  She secured her own gas mask from below the bench. The rubber pressed against her nose, stifling the air. Plastic clamped at the edges of her face, pinching her headgear into her skin. She couldn’t function with this on. She couldn’t wear them both. The mouth covering alone would have to do.

  The hovney puttered, taking her as far as Down Street. Clouds cloaked the sky above, but citizens no longer ran in frenzied disarray, seeking shelter. The streets were deadly quiet.

  “Thank you. And now get yourself home,” she told the driver. “Get where it’s safe.”

  “You here yet, Digby?” called Bronwyn.

  “Ladies?” she called, running down the boardwalk. The roar of their planes sheered through the sky.

  “It’s coming!” said Aline. “It’s nearly here!”

  Victoria peered over, her heart thudding. The frothing line of foam in the ocean was fifty feet out, making its way toward the shore. She hadn’t seen it from a civilian’s perspective in so long. But the answer was clear. It was what they should have been doing all along.

  “Remember the Burst?” Victoria called to them. “Flare out, get as close as you can and confuse the monster. Then all but one pulls back, rendering it completely unsure which of you to go after.”

  “We can’t do that without you,” Bronwyn argued.

  “Yes you can. This time we’re not observing or dismembering. Bronwyn, you shoot to kill. That thing has a cluster of hearts. That’s your target.”

  “Victoria—”

  She ran up the cliff to the watcher’s shed, determined to find shelter there and watch their progress. To help where she could. She climbed the path, scraping her hand on a rock.

  “You heard me. Shoot to kill.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Bronwyn said with vigor.

  Graham ran. He ran so hard his lungs should have ached. He knew he left Miller in a bad spot, but he had to get this thing as far from the old man as he could.

  Without this rock, Starkey wouldn’t be able to create his Gateway anymore. But it was a risk he had to take if it meant protecting people’s memories. He couldn’t let Starkey erase them. He couldn’t let him keep subjecting them to the attacks of the Kreak.

  And he hoped Oscar and Rosalind had made it through okay.

  He crossed the miles between the outer countryside and the seaside as though it were nothing more than another track race. Soon, he passed the smaller, packed-in homes and made for Down Street and the boardwalk. His hand grew sweaty within its glove, but he gripped the rock. His feet were almost to the sand.

  Planes roared along the shore in an aerial dance with the metallic monster. They weren’t in precise formations, but bobbing back and forth, zooming in and out around the brute’s swinging arms.

  Victoria’s plane wasn’t there. Graham’s heart caught. Was she back at Starkey’s? Had she decided to leave after all?

  The four planes shot flames, but it wasn’t at the creature’s face or legs as they’d done before. They were swooping in, aiming for its chest.

  Its chest.

  Dread struck him, urging him to move faster. Whether they knew it or not, those were people’s hearts, maybe people the Nauts knew and loved. Victoria’s friend Dahlia was in there.

  Graham raced toward the cliff. He had to find a headset, he had to warn them.

  He hiked the craggy steps up to the watcher’s shed. Whoever replaced Harry had to have a headset, some way to communicate with the girls.

  Graham rushed through the door, panting. A bed lay in the corner, a wooden table and chair beside it. And across from them was a long counter below the window where several machines sat, including what Graham assumed was the siren.

  But there was no watcher on duty. Instead, Victoria stood at the window, her fingers at the piece in her ear.

  “Emma!” she called. “That opening is yours! Come from behind—aim for the hearts!”

  Graham dashed forward, grabbed her by the shoulders, and whirled her around.

  Victoria screamed, her eyes widened in fear. The expression dimmed when she saw it was him.

  “What on earth are you doing?” she cried.

  “Call them back,” he said, pointing behind her. “Call them off.”

  “What? Why? We’re killing it this time, Graham. We can’t keep letting it—”

  “You can’t!” he shouted over her.

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” he panted. “Dahlia is part of it.”

  Forty-five

  Panic fisted over Victoria’s heart. “Are you certain?”

  “Oh, I’m certain all right. You can’t kill that thing or you’ll be killing her and everyone else trapped in it.”

  Dahlia was a part of the monster? Cogs clicked in her brain, piecing together what she knew. Uncle Jarvis denying her answers, pushing the beast back into the sea over and over, Dahlia disappearing after its last attack.

  Graham’s eyes were forceful and insistent. Though she wasn’t sure how, he was telling the truth.

  She tapped a finger to her ear. “Retreat!” she called.

  “Are you kidding me?” Orpha cried.

  “What’s going on, Digby?” Bronwyn shouted.

  “Revert to evasive maneuvers,” she said. “X-formation. Push it back into the sea, I repeat, do not kill the Kreak.”

  “Whatever you say,” said Emma in frustration. The girls’ voices grumbled in her ear, but she ignored them, pleased to see that, despite their confusion, they were obeying. The four planes fell back and drew into a line over the ocean, waiting for their planes to recharge before firing again.

  The Kreak seemed confused by their retreat as well. It blinked its clockwork eyes multiple times before diving down and reemerging.

  “Now tell me,” she said, turning to Graham. “What do you mean, it’s Dahlia? And why are you holding a rock?”

  Graham lifted his gloved hand and showed her a fist-sized rock speckled with purple and white. “This is why it’s happening. We saw it. Oscar was turning into it too. You know that in
jury in his arm? His arm turned to metal.”

  Victoria gasped.

  “Starkey admitted it himself. He wasn’t at Wolverton going to school, that was just the story he made you all think while Oscar recovered and turned human again. The people who’ve gone missing? The ones who were killed? They turned into the Kreak.”

  “How do we stop it?” she asked, her pulse pounding in her ears. “How can we possibly bring them back?”

  “I have an idea,” Graham said, setting the rock on the table below the window. “Starkey was creating a small Gateway to send Oscar, Roz, and me back to Chicago. He was going to erase everyone’s memories after that—with this stone—he didn’t want to fix it at all.”

  “But we have to fix it,” Victoria argued in astonishment.

  “Exactly. That’s why he sent Oscar back again. Whenever a person is away from the Charge here, they go back to themselves.”

  “So we send the Kreak through.”

  Graham shook his head. “He said something in there, Tori. He said we have to get people a few at a time to his Gateway because there was no possible way to get something as large as the Kreak through it at once.”

  Panic surged through Victoria. “But we have to do something! We can’t kill it if Dahlia, if—” Her father could be in there. Mrs. Powell. So many who had been killed by the Kreak. But they couldn’t let it keep coming. They’d all be consumed.

  “I have an idea.” Graham gestured to the purplish stone on the table. “This rock has to be combined with water in order to convert its energy. And I’m pretty sure I know where we can find enough water to give the stone the power it needs to create a large Gateway.” His eyes rolled toward the window, tilting his head for emphasis.

  Victoria glanced at the tumultuous sea below, gray and rolling under a murky sky. The Kreak rose and batted a large talon at the Nauts’ V-gull formation. The girls broke, spearing sideways to avoid the impact.

  “One large enough to pull the Kreak through to Chicago,” Victoria said, cottoning on.

  “We need your Nauts to lure the Kreak to the edge, where the sky meets the sea. As far away from the town as we can. They drop the rock in and pull out last minute, just in time.”

  Victoria shook her head. “I can’t ask them to do that. They could be killed.” She was the only one who could pull out of a dive that quickly. They’d proven it in training often enough—it was one reason why she’d been appointed their leader. She was the best pilot they had.

  “Then you do it,” Graham said. “Why aren’t you out there?”

  She met him with pain in her eyes. “I can’t. I can’t get in a plane.”

  “Why not?”

  Her throat thickened. “You know why.”

  “Your flashbacks? That doesn’t happen every time,” he argued.

  “But if it does, I could ruin everything. If I fell into the ocean with the rock in the wrong place—it would be disastrous.”

  She pushed away from him to the opposite side of the shed. Reality crashed around her. She couldn’t send her Nauts on a potentially deadly maneuver like that, not when she knew they couldn’t pull out of it.

  Deep down, she knew what needed to be done. If she faced those memories they would no longer haunt her. She knew it might make her go crazy. It might destroy her.

  But it might not.

  She looked out the window. The Kreak roared, snapping its metal jaws. Emma’s plane diverted just in time, shooting backward. How long could they hold it off? It wasn’t retreating as it usually did. It wasn’t responding to their flames.

  She had to help them. No matter what it took.

  “I have to face them, Graham. The memories. Will you hold me?”

  “Are you sure?”

  She chewed her lip. “I’m sure.”

  His arms reached around her, warm and safe. “Whenever you want,” he said. “Do you—you want me to tell you? That seemed to trigger it last time.”

  She swallowed, nestling against his chest, his arms the only things keeping her from falling to pieces.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He brushed a hand along her back, smoothing it over her hair. “Your name . . . was Jenna . . .”

  The whiteness engulfed her mind as he spoke, stabbing beneath her skull. She winced, aching, fighting against it.

  “I have to do this,” she told herself. “I have to let this happen.”

  She breathed through her nose, her muscles tingling, turning supple . . .

  The memories that had been plaguing her for so long came into full being. The police lights blaring outside their shop, her father’s kind, sad smile when he’d told her he was going to jail. Feeling empty and alone without him.

  She remembered warming to the attention of a boy while she’d been doing laundry at the laundromat on the corner, the swirling windows, the way the boy had kissed her hand.

  She’d ached for his attention; she’d felt so lonely. She hadn’t said no when he wanted everything from her. And then he’d abandoned her, left her pregnant and even more alone than she’d felt before.

  Her friends encouraged her to give up the baby, to abort it, but Victoria couldn’t bring herself to do it. She herself was abandoned—how could she do that to an innocent being who’d had no say in the matter?

  She had the baby and became a teenage mother. It was painful, frightening, and yet fulfilling at once. She’d never loved anything as much as she did that small, sweet boy. Life was hard. She eventually gave up on school, working whenever she could.

  He’d heard about the baby. He came to visit, promised not to leave her again, offered to babysit while she had to work. The pain of the memory was too much. It choked her, left her gasping for breath. Victoria tightened, securing her barriers, pushing it away.

  “Let it in,” Graham encouraged. “Let it come.”

  “I have to do this,” she whispered to herself.

  Graham held her against his chest. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “I have you.”

  She leaned into him, his pulse thrumming steadily, soothing her.

  He’d abandoned his responsibility in favor of a party down the street. Left their baby sleeping on the bed. The baby rolled over and suffocated in his sleep.

  The pain struck through Victoria with such ferocity she gasped, reeling from it. She’d wanted to die, right along with her helpless little son. Her little Asher.

  She’d found Rosalind in the street—only she wasn’t Rosalind then. They’d been friends, and Rosalind told her about a man she’d met, a man who promised he could help her escape her life. Victoria stormed into A.C. Starkey’s flat, raging, demanding he send her away before she ended her life.

  And Starkey obeyed.

  She gasped out of the reverie, clinging to Graham’s shoulders as the white light of memory dissipated. She sobbed in his arms while he rubbed her back, reliving the memories anew, soaking in the sorrow.

  “Shh,” Graham soothed, holding her tightly and smelling of wind and chestnuts. “It’s okay.”

  The world spun and slowed all in one moment. Her heart was breaking, cracking and losing all of its light. She stared at a freckle on Graham’s throat, lacking energy, her body cold but her eyes burning.

  “I’m here,” Graham soothed, coddling her as though she were a child.

  Her mind frayed, speckled with pain-streaks of white. It hummed, vibrated, threatened to break her along with her heart. She wanted to stumble, to fall, to collapse and never rise again.

  But Graham’s warm, strong arms wouldn’t let her.

  A new light coiled in her heart in that moment. She wasn’t falling. She wasn’t broken.

  She wasn’t alone.

  She sniffed, finally feeling strong enough to pull away. “You knew?” Her mistake? Her awful, lovely, heartbreaking mistake?

  He swallowed,
smoothed back her hair, and nodded. “Starkey showed me. Are you—are you all right?” He held her head directly before his, examining her eyes, scanning for signs of disconnect.

  She wiped the tears from her eyes, the hollow in her heart dissipating to a dull hum. “I’m all right.”

  “You know your past now,” Graham confirmed.

  “I do.”

  “And it hasn’t broken you.”

  She thought this over. The sorrow was ripe and fresh, but faint, all at once. It was . . . different.

  “I will always carry that sorrow with me, Graham,” she said. “I—I lost him. I lost a baby I never should have had. But he was a part of me in so many ways—Starkey’s Charge wasn’t powerful enough to erase him completely. I’ll never forget this, this regret. About all of it. I regret so much.”

  Her voice broke, and she closed her eyes, taking a moment before continuing.

  Graham watched her, so attentive, so careful.

  “My name might have changed, and the way I speak and dress may be different now, but he didn’t change who I am. Not really. And while I was running from it, I couldn’t overcome my past. Now that I know about it, I can face it easier.”

  She wasn’t healed yet. But confirmation revolved in her chest. She could start to heal now, instead of Starkey’s solution of merely covering the wound. It had never left her. It was still trying to make its way into her life. Wounds demanded to be felt, and she’d needed to process it.

  Others in her town needed this too. Who knew how many of them were dealing with something just as hard, having it ghost in their minds without any sense? They couldn’t keep hiding here, running from their problems.

  She couldn’t keep running from hers either. She smiled at Graham, grateful he’d helped her to see that.

  “Are you ready?” Graham asked. “To get back out there?”

  She sniffed, wiping her cheeks. “More than ever.” She tapped her earpiece. “Bronwyn?”

  “My lady,” Bronwyn replied cynically.

  “Remember how you said you’d follow my orders, even if you disagreed?”