“So,” he said as he took a step forward and raised his arms upwards, “I suppose your next question is…”
Jane sighed.
Max walked forward and stepped past her, a smile broadening on his lips as he glanced down at her.
When he had passed her, she looked at the ground, then slowly turned and faced him again. Now, he was grinning. “First, before we get to that, I have a question. Can I use the Machine to alter the past? I saw my parents, Max. I saw my father on the road; he might have seen me. What happened?”
“Already written into history. Your father mentioned seeing you on that road to your mother one night—or rather, someone who looked like a grown-up version of you, but it instigated a fight, and so he never brought it up again. Some things are happening now, but they won’t change the outcome—try as much as you like. The past is gone, Jane, and it can’t be changed. Your presence may change small details over time, and you would always be drawn back—like gravity—to the site of the accident and other similarly charged events.” He paused and looked into her eyes. Then he walked toward her and reached out for her hands.
She looked at his outstretched palms and placed hers down on them.
“The most you could ever do is change some small details. If history is a giant river, you’re creating tiny ripples. That’s all.”
“OK. That explains that, I guess. But we’re not done here.” Her brow furrowed.
Max nodded, then leveled his head and faced her. “OK.”
“So…” She turned around and began to walk away from him, pacing. “What is he looking for, if not the Machine itself?” She had her back to him for a moment and was staring up at a bright red globe of fiery light in the distance directly above the road. When she sensed no answer was forthcoming, she turned around to face him again. Once more, she found him standing as regally as ever in the very center of the road, his coat wrapped around him and his hands clasped behind him.
“He’s trying to reach the Nexus point.”
“What’s that?”
Max took a breath. “All psychic energy flows from somewhere. Every thought that has been or ever will be passes through it at some point in time. The Nexus is the natural outcome of this—of existence itself, and it must take physical manifestation somewhere; it must take on the form of a tangible object. To me, it would appear as one thing, to you, perhaps something else.”
“I take it it’s not meant to be touched.”
Max smiled. “No. Absolutely not.”
“What would be the result?”
“I don’t know. I presume the acquisition of vast, unimaginable power.”
“More power than yours?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, and his voice was curt and crisp, echoing in the dark light that surrounded them. Slowly, he took a step toward her. “The power of a god.” He kept walking and continued on past her, then glanced over his shoulder. “At minimum.”
Jane thought she should be showing some emotion—that she should be shocked at least—but she was not, and she then realized why: She had already anticipated something like this. Sighing, she looked at the ground and began to pace again slowly. “So we need to—”
The rumbling came with no warning. It started at first as a low vibration in the ground beneath her feet. She looked up immediately at the stars, which remained unmoving, but within seconds, the road beneath them was shaking violently, and she struggled to keep her balance.
“Jane!” Max called out as he ran toward her.
A giant crack appeared in the center of the road behind him. It opened up further, following him as he dashed across it. Within seconds, it was at his feet, and then the road beneath him parted, and he fell straight into the gaping hole below toward the infinity of blue and black that waited, painted with stars at what seemed to be an infinite distance.
Jane would have screamed out, but there was no time for that as she struggled to maintain her balance. Through the crack that had stopped just at her feet, she watched as Max fell from her view. Then the shaking stopped suddenly, and all around her was silence. She glanced around, but all was empty. The road in front of her—which had previously stretched into forever—was gone completely, and only a small section behind her remained.
She felt something pull on her shoulder, and there was the feeling of a hand falling down there, grasping tightly. She screamed, and the rest of the road began to break apart around her. Then there was only bright light as the beautiful place flashed from existence before her.
CHAPTER 21
MARBLE HALL
Jane was falling fast, although there was no wind, and she could not see—there was only darkness. Then, something came into view. Amid the parting dark, there were patches of what appeared to be marble, and slowly, they revealed themselves to be upside-down staircases, to Jane’s consternation.
She fell further, and as her vision became clearer, the view before her came into focus. She gasped when the enormity of what she was falling into became apparent. Somewhere in the distance on her left was an enormous source of white light, but Jane did not dare look at it, for the psychic emanations coming from it made her stomach turn. She felt the urge to vomit in its presence, and so directed her attention elsewhere.
Up above her, the marble walls climbed for hundreds of feet. On her right, a cavernous hallway stretched on into the distance, seemingly into infinity, and its vaulted ceiling was also hundreds of feet high. Just to the left of this amazing arch, a complex series of Escher-like staircases stretched across the ceiling and reached down the wall toward the floor there. These also appeared to be a great distance away, although distance seemed difficult to judge in this place.
She looked down and saw that she was approaching the ground. It was a straightforward stone platform, colored light brown, and it appeared to have a marble-like surface. Striations of different colors ran through it. She floated slowly toward it, and then her feet touched down. The platform was about fifteen feet in width. On her left, the narrow surface seemed to fade into nothing about a hundred feet away as it intersected the light coming from the terrible, iridescent object at the center of this strange world.
On her right, she looked to see that the surface she was standing on connected to a staircase about a hundred feet away. These stairs led up to another platform that ran all the way across toward the other side of the vast interior—a distance that must have been at least three hundred feet. Jane squinted as she looked diagonally across at this other platform, for it seemed that it was held up by nothing, and below it, there appeared to be an infinite, smoky drop. On the other side, it met another staircase, which descended toward the lower level where the vast, cavernous archway that seemed to stretch on forever began.
Just to the left of this, she could see the beginnings of the staircases, which opened up and led to a different area. These eventually arched up and around into a complex series, moving up the walls and reaching up toward the ceiling. As she squinted, she could make out, in the far corners, what appeared to be exit points, where dim light could be seen cast against the walls that formed the passages. Somehow, Jane thought that these exits would lead to places—realities, even—that she couldn’t imagine.
Jane’s blood ran cold as she felt the beginnings of a voice permeate the vast hall. Indeed, the place she was in was so vast that there appeared to be small tufts of cloud high in the distance. In some sections, she was sure she could see the sun shining, but as the being began to speak—as the source of light on her left revealed itself for who it was—the sunlight decreased, and clouded shadows passed over all of that world, dimming the beautiful, though now tainted, brown marble. It had been just a grumble that reverberated out into the vast interior.
As she looked down, she realized with horror that her clothing had changed, and she was once again wearing the white attire that had been given to he
r in the first facility.
“Did you do this?” she asked, directing her speech toward the essence of the being, whom she now knew was holding this structure together.
No response.
She looked around again. “Where am I?”
My realm. My mind, the reply came in a terrible, dripping growl.
I’d rather not be here.
You have no choice! the voice growled, and now there was a hint of mockery.
She turned toward the light, though she didn’t look into it. You’re looking for the Nexus.
Yes. I see he told you all about it—the secrets of the universe. How does it feel?
It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t want power. That’s your thing, remember? You’re the insecure one here, apparently.
She heard what she thought was a muffled laugh.
The voice grew darker. Do you know what my prison was like, Jane? I can barely remember myself. In fact, I mostly don’t. All I know is that I still want to reach the Nexus. Perhaps… Yes… Perhaps more than ever now. For power… and for vengeance. A vengeance that will make them beg for something like the place they left me.
Her pulse quickened, and she turned away once again. His attention had drifted for a moment, but she could feel it coming back like a swinging pendulum, toward the thing she was growing to fear. The light from his essence changed and cast swirling beams on the wall of the massive archway that stood at the other side of the enormous place. She could feel his attention return to her—a consciousness as vast and terrible as a darkened, decayed world—tilting toward her.
Would you like to know about my prison, Jane? Would you like to know what it was like?
Jane quivered. No, she thought. Then the world went dark. She clasped her hands to her eyes and tried to breathe, but found that her chest was closing up rapidly. I-I can’t see. What did you do? What did you do to my eyes? she screamed out.
His voice grew louder. You’re blind, Jane, and that’s just the beginning. There’s so much more to show you—centuries, millennia of confinement by these so-called guardians of reality. This is the truth; this is what they REALLY do.
She reached her hands forward, as though it would help, but there was nothing to grasp except empty space, and she began to hyperventilate, taking in gulps of air as the panic rose in her chest. But he showed me. He showed me what you were doing. You destroyed that continent. You murdered those people! she yelled back, holding back tears that threatened to fall. What the hell? Where has my vision gone? she wondered, doing her absolute best to keep her thoughts as private as possible. This has to be a trick, a psychic trick of some kind. My vision isn’t actually gone—I’m not actually blind. I have to stay cal—
I can hear every thought you have, Jane. In fact, I can hear every thought you have ever had in your entire life.
She gasped and fell to her knees. Finding one shred of courage, she replied, We’ll see about that. She heard him laugh in response, a sound that echoed around the vast interior.
Here is a taste of the prison.
Something touched her body, like a tendril reaching out in the darkness. She screamed. No. Please no. She stood up, not knowing where she was going, and forced herself to concentrate, reaching out with her hands. Just when panic threatened to overwhelm her, a voice broke through the darkness, speaking through the distance in her mind, like a powerful beam of light breaking through solid rock.
SEE WITH YOUR MIND, JANE! came Max’s piercing, echoing voice, and the sound resonated all around the interior, echoing off the vast walls.
NO! STAY OUT! the entity screamed.
Max! What do you mean? Jane yelled back to him.
He’s taken away your vision temporarily. Don’t worry about that. You can still see with your mind. He can’t stop you from doing that.
She stopped moving, trying to understand what he was talking about. How? she asked.
I’m coming. Just concentrate.
Then he was gone. She felt the black tendril reach out for her again, and once again, she screamed. She whipped around, and an explosion of psychic force shot from her body in defense. She felt that whatever had been grasping at her was obliterated. She also heard an explosion below her, and she knew intuitively that she had destroyed a portion of the platform on which she stood. Above her, there was a tremendous rumbling sound as something broke. She drew her attention away from that, though in the distance she could hear more sounds of things beginning to move, as though the entire hall had come to life.
She thought about Max’s words and focused. OK. He’s taken my physical vision, but I know what Max was talking about. He was talking about psychic vision. I just need to focus. She shut her eyes tightly and felt for the power. Immediately, it was there, and then she pushed outward. Her psychic vision grew, and the hall once again came into view. At first, it was partially covered in wisps of smoke, but as she concentrated harder, these began to disappear, and then it appeared to her even clearer than before. Indeed, now, as she glanced up toward the corners where the staircases ran across the walls in complex patterns, she could see everything. A quick look across the chasm to her right at the giant archway proved that she could see far beyond where she had been able to see with her physical vision. Indeed, the archway did seem to stretch into infinity. She grinned as a feeling of pure joy ran through her veins.
I can see! she yelled out. Turning toward the light, she gasped as she laid her vision upon it, for in her psychic sight, it was a horrible shade of dark purple, which ran with striations of a blood red color, like a vile, beating heart.
What are you? she asked in utter disgust.
The entity screamed, and the walls all around them trembled in the distance. She could hear its private thoughts as it roared in its own mind, though she wished she hadn’t. NO LONGER WHAT I WAS—THEY TOOK THAT FROM ME!
Jane turned on her heel and ran as the entity’s screams echoed behind, and with every step she took, she felt the ground beneath her shudder. The pain still throbbed in her ribcage as she moved, but it seemed to be dulled here for some reason. She could see the end of the platform she was moving across, and she was only seventy feet away from it now. She set her eyes on the secondary, upper platform that led across to the giant archway on the other side of the hall. There was a small set of steps that led up to the other walkway just before her at the end of the surface she was now running across, and she focused on this target.
Far above her to the left, a quick glance proved that her suspicions about the other noises she had heard had been correct: The entire interior had come to life with motion. The massive and incredibly complex series of Escher-like staircases had begun to move around, disconnecting and reconnecting to each other with incredible precision.
Jane reached the end of the platform and vaunted upward onto the steps that linked it to the other walkway. Sprinting up them quickly, she reached the top, and then continued to dash across this upper surface. She dared to turn her vision back toward the entity for just a second. It appeared to have grown darker now, and a streak of lightning reached out from its left edge and coursed through the moving clouds that formed the side of this strange bubble of a world.
In the upper left distance, something caught Jane’s eye. As she glanced in that direction, she saw one section of a staircase was moving in a jerking fashion, and then it broke away from the adjoining sections. She watched—squelching the horror that tried to rise within her—as the section of steps began to collapse on itself, and chunks of rock and clouds of dust exploded outward. After a few more seconds, it had formed into a perfect sphere.
Jane kept running as she stared at the hovering orb of rock, knowing what was coming. Looking straight across toward the end of the platform, she saw that she was now passing the halfway mark, and she would reach the other side shortly. She knew somehow that if she could reach the marble arch there, she would find a way to safety.
She glanced up to her left again just as the globe of rock rushed toward her at what seemed to her like an impossible speed, and Jane could sense—her psychic vision having grown—that the entity had momentarily forgotten what it was looking for and was giving in to rage. In less than a second, the sphere crashed into the platform in front of her, just fifteen feet away. There was an explosion of marble and rock all around her—blasting from every direction—but she could see through the haze that the surface beyond it was still intact. Her heightened instincts took over and told her to keep running. She didn’t falter, not for a moment, as her vision flickered with incredible detail; she saw chunks of rock that flew past her over her shoulder, and some of the smaller pieces that pelted her face.
She reached the precipice and pushed beneath her with the power, forcing herself upward and over the twenty-foot gap. She sailed through the air, her arms rolling and legs pumping as they searched for something to grip. Landing safely and securely on the other side, she broke into a run again as soon as her feet touched the ground, leaving behind the cloud of dust and debris.
Keep going, Jane! came the sound of Max’s reassuring voice.
SILENCE!
She automatically reached her hands to her ears, trying to protect herself from the psychic scream, but she was unable to. For just a moment, her senses faltered, and the vision of the world before her wavered. She recovered quickly, though, having slowed for only a second, and continued onward. Ahead of her, she saw that she was now nearing the staircase that led down toward the lower level on the other side, just underneath where the giant arch was, and she felt her heart thud with excitement.
Rise (The Ethereal Vision Book 2) Page 30
