by Rachel Caine
Frank was now coughing, too.
Claire suddenly felt it hit her, too, the ripping pain in her lungs, the overwhelming convulsion. She gasped, instinctively pulled in a breath, and coughed. And kept coughing.
Gas. It was gas. For some reason, the vampires were more susceptible to it; maybe it was attacking them through the skin, or it just took less to make them sick. Michael was gagging now, and Eve and Shane were starting to choke, too.
Claire staggered from the force of her coughing, and almost fell. Oliver lunged and caught her, then lost his grip as he coughed again; she wavered, perilously close to the edge of a big, dark abyss that was—she now realized—spewing out some kind of toxin. She tried to hold her breath, but couldn’t do it for long. It felt like she couldn’t get enough air. She heard herself making gasping noises, like a fish out of water. Her head hurt, badly, and she just needed air. . . .
Claire felt hot and sick and scared and dying, but it came to her with sudden, brutal clarity that she had to get them out of there. She was the only one who could do it, the only one who knew the path. They weren’t far from the exit to the cavern; she couldn’t see it, but she knew it was there. It was right behind that outcropping of quartz—a quick left turn would put them on solid rock, and then they’d be out.
She had to get them there.
She reached back and grabbed Oliver’s hand. It was wet; she didn’t know if that was blood, and she didn’t look. “Hold hands!” she shouted, and plunged ahead, not bothering to test the rock anymore. If it broke, it didn’t really matter. Being careful was going to get them all killed.
She didn’t know if everyone was linked together, but she couldn’t wait. She only knew the feel of the stone beneath her feet, the hot, burning pressure in her lungs, the throb of pain in her head. The unreal glow of the flashlight reflecting back white from quartz and gray from stone and disappearing into the black . . .
She couldn’t feel her feet now, but she couldn’t stop. Claire lurched forward, dragging on Oliver’s hand to pull him with her, and jumped across a two-foot-wide black chasm, landing badly and nearly sprawling. She felt the cool, blowing pressure of the gas rippling her clothes as she passed over the pit. Oliver’s hand almost ripped free from hers, but she pulled, and he made it. As soon as he was across he turned and yanked Shane over, who pulled Michael, who pulled Eve, who pulled Frank.
West.
Where was West?
Claire spotted her, standing a dozen feet behind them, staggering. Blood was a black mask on her face, and as Claire watched, West dropped the bow she’d been carrying, and fell to her knees.
She pitched forward, into the darkness.
Frank lunged, trying to get to her, but Oliver held him back. With his other hand, Oliver shoved Claire in the opposite direction. She hated him right then, hated him badly enough to push him in, too, but she knew what he was doing.
He was saving their lives.
She plunged on. They were on the path now, and even though she was coughing helplessly, even though it felt like strength was bleeding out of her with every step, she knew where she was going. She felt a wave of coolness against her face, and suddenly her coughing lessened. She dragged in a choking breath, and then another one, and tasted beautiful, delicious, sweet air.
She’d passed the quartz outcropping, and was in the narrow tunnel that led to the black emptiness of another portal.
Claire made it there, staggering but still upright, and the others joined her. Oliver had dropped her hand as soon as he could, but Shane took it, and that was good. She squeezed tightly, and he gave her a thumbs-up as he coughed again and wiped blood from his mouth. His eyes were bloodshot, too. Everyone seemed to be okay, even Michael.
Claire kept breathing in deep, cleansing gasps, and focused on the portal. This part would be tricky if Myrnin had remembered to lock it, but she didn’t think he would have. This hadn’t been used in so long, according to him, that he’d actually forgotten it existed—at least he had, until Ada had trapped them both in the cavern.
If he’d forgotten all that, he’d have forgotten this secret portal, too.
She hoped.
The frequencies tuned in her head, and she saw a wash of shimmer across the black, then a glow, then pinpoints of light. An eerie wash of color, somewhere between gray and blue. It finally resolved into shadows, and overhead lights, and the weird, sprawling, organic shape of the computer that lay under Myrnin’s lab.
“Quietly,” Oliver said, and squeezed her shoulder in warning. She nodded. “Let us go first.”
She stood back, holding the portal open, as Oliver stepped through, and then Frank. Shane, Eve, and Michael all looked at her, and she nodded.
“You guys go on,” Shane said. “I’ll go with her.”
Michael took Eve’s hand in his and stepped through the portal.
“You don’t have to do this,” Shane said. “You could just let us handle it.”
“Us? Who’s us?”
He jerked his chin at the vampires and Eve. “You know. The rest of us. This is going to be dangerous.”
“Not going to happen,” Claire said. “I might be able to get him to stop.”
“Who, crazy dude? Maybe. Or he might pull your head off,” Shane said. “I kind of worry.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah?”
“A little bit.”
“That’s . . . nice.”
He studied her, and returned the smile. “Yeah,” he said. “Kind of is, actually. So. I’m going, then.”
“Me, too.”
Shane held out his hand, and she took it, and they went in together.
On the other side of the portal, there was no sign of Myrnin at all. The machine hummed and clanked and hissed, steam whispering from valves at all angles. He’s here, Claire thought. Somewhere. Oliver and Frank were moving silently through the shadows, hunting for him. Eve, Michael, and Shane were sensibly staying put where they were.
The switch on the wall was the master control for the power. Claire pulled free of Shane’s grip, and they had a mime-style argument, him shaking his head, her holding her finger to her lips, him mouthing words she was pretty sure would have gotten him expelled if he’d actually been fifteen. Or at least put in detention. She made a definite “stay here” motion, and moved toward the power switch.
When she was still about two feet away, she felt the prickling warning around the metal. Myrnin had wired it, somehow, and there was live current running through it. If she—or any of them—touched it, they’d roast.
She studied the problem for a few seconds, then turned and went back to her friends. She grabbed Eve by the arm, bent close, and whispered, “I need your boots.”
“What? ” Eve tried to keep her voice soft, but it came out a little too startled. “My what?”
“Boots,” Claire hissed. “Now. Hurry.”
Eve gave her a wide-eyed, doubtful look, shook her head in a way that indicated she thought Claire had gone completely mental, and bent over to unlace her heavy, clunky, thick-soled boots. She slid one off, then the other, and stood there on the cold stone floor in red and black striped socks. She held the boots out to Claire.
Claire stuck her hands inside the boots like they were giant, awkward gloves. They were warm and a little damp from Eve’s feet. Under normal circumstances that would have been gross, but Claire was kind of over that now.
She went back to the switch, took a deep breath, and clapped the rubber (or plastic) soles of Eve’s boots onto the red-painted lever. She closed her eyes when she did it, half expecting to get zapped into oblivion, but instead, nothing happened. She could still feel the power, but the boots were insulating her, as were her own rubber-soled shoes.
Claire yanked down on the switch, using all of her strength, and for a second it seemed it wouldn’t give—but then it did, snapping to the off position with a sudden, shocking clank of metal.
And it didn’t matter. Nothing happened.
The mach
ine kept running.
Claire stripped the boots off her hands and tossed them to Eve, who quickly bent over to put them on her feet, unfastened.
“I knew someone like you would come,” Myrnin said, and Claire thought he was somewhere behind the machine, hard to see, harder to reach. “Someone who wanted to destroy everything. Someone who wanted to bring down Morganville. I’ve been working for days to be sure you wouldn’t succeed. Save yourselves. Leave now.”
“Myrnin, there’s nothing here to save! It’s just a machine, and it’s broken! Ada’s gone!”
He hissed, and there was fury in his voice when he said, “Don’t you say that. Don’t you ever say that.”
There was a choked cry, and a sudden, violent flurry of motion in the dark where Myrnin was hiding.
Oliver staggered backward and fell into a pool of light. His face was twisted, and there was a silver stake buried deep in his chest. He went limp and stayed that way.
Claire rushed forward, but before she could get to him, Myrnin stepped out of the dark and grabbed her. She hadn’t seen him coming, and couldn’t twist out of the way in time. He had her in a split second, dragging her away from Oliver and off into the shadows with his hand over her mouth.
“No!” Shane yelled, and ran forward to yank the stake out of Oliver’s chest. Oliver convulsed and rolled over on his side, but Shane hardly even paused.
He came after Myrnin and Claire with the weapon.
Frank Collins grabbed his son from behind and slung him out of the way just as Shane hit a trip wire, almost invisible in the dim light.
All Claire could see from her perspective was a brilliant flash of light, which was followed almost immediately by an incredible, numbing roar of sound. She felt stinging cuts open up on her body, even as Myrnin shoved her down to the floor and fell atop her, and a choking wave of dust washed over her. She twisted free of Myrnin, who was lying dazed, and tried to scramble to her feet.
In front of the machine, a huge metal column had tipped over and pinned Frank Collins in a pile of rubble. Shane was lying a few feet away, covered in pale dust but still alive and breathing; as Claire pulled herself up, she saw Michael get to him and check his pulse. He gave her a thumbs-up gesture, then moved to where Frank was pinned. He tried to lift the metal column, but it was too heavy even for his vampire strength.
And Frank didn’t look good. There was a steady, thick stream of blood running from his chest to pool on the floor around him.
“Help me!” Michael yelled, and Oliver managed to crawl over and put his shoulder to the pylon as well. “Push!”
“No use,” Frank gasped. “I’m done. Finish this. Claire, finish it.”
She turned toward the console of the machine. It was covered in dust, and the screen was cracked, but it was still alive and working. She reached for a handful of wiring, but stopped just an inch away as she felt the hair on her arms stirring and standing up.
“You can’t,” Myrnin said as he rolled over and stared at her. “You can’t stop it. It’s all right. Once you let go, it feels better. You’ll feel better. Just . . . let go.”
“I can’t do that.” She was crying now, out of sheer frustration and fright. “Help me. Help me!”
“It can’t be turned off now,” Myrnin said. “I made sure. Ada won’t ever be hurt again. Not by you, not by me. She’s safe.”
“She’s killing us!” Claire screamed. “God! Stop!”
“No, she’s fixing us,” Myrnin said. “Don’t you understand? I read the journals, the ones upstairs. Morganville hasn’t been right for years. It’s been changing, turning into something wrong. She’s made us right again. All of us.”
“Bullshit,” Frank Collins said, and coughed blood. “Shut it down, Myrnin. You have to do it.”
Myrnin looked at him over the pile of rubble. “Don’t you want to go back to when you were happy, when we were all happy? You, your wife, your daughter, your son? It can all come back. You can feel that way again. She can make you feel that way.”
Frank laughed. “You’re going to give me my family back?” he said. “Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Not me,” Myrnin said. “Not really. But I can make it all as it was, for you as well as me. You, of all people, should want that.”
Frank’s throat worked, as if he were swallowing something unpleasant. His eyes were bright and very, very cold. “So you’re God now,” he said. “You can bring back the dead.”
“I can give you a new family. This girl can be your new daughter. We can find you a wife. I can make you forget. You’ll never know the difference, and she’ll forget all about who she once was.”
“You really think that’s tempting,” Frank Collins said, very softly. “It’s sick. My wife and daughter are dead, and you’re not going to make me believe a lie. You’re not going to pervert their memories. My son loves that girl, and I’m not letting you take her away from him, too.”
Myrnin looked up, as if he’d sensed something. “It’s too late,” he said. “It’s starting.”
Claire heard the pitch of the machine’s hum changing, shifting to something higher, more urgent. She felt a pulse of power from it, and something went weird in her head. Something she needed.
Something that held her in place in the world, in time, in space.
It hurt. It felt like her brain was being shredded, ripped in half, and memories spilled out in a silvery stream. She couldn’t hold on to them; it was all just . . . noise.
The pain stopped, but something worse took over. Panic. Horror. Fear. She was looking at a room full of strangers. Scary people in a scary place. How had she gotten here? What was . . . what was happening? Where was she?
Why wasn’t she at home?
No, that wasn’t right. She knew them; she knew them all. That was Shane, getting to his feet . . . then everything shifted, and he was a boy she didn’t know, dark-haired, dusty. A stranger. He started toward her, but then he wavered and stopped, and put his hands to his head as if it hurt. Hers still hurt, too. There was a sound, a weird sound that wasn’t really there, wasn’t really a sound at all, and she felt . . .
Lost. She felt so lost, and alone, and terrified.
It was like having mental double vision. She knew these people at some very basic level, but she’d also forgotten them. She didn’t/ did know the man with the scarred face, and the boy reaching out to her, and the girl with the dark hair and the pale face, and the other golden-haired boy. She could see them in one way, with names and histories, but it kept fading out. Disappearing.
No. She didn’t know anyone here, and she’d never felt so vulnerable and horrible in her life. She wanted to go home.
There was another stranger dressed in funky old Victorian clothes, like some steampunk wannabe, staring at her with big, dark eyes. He reached out for her, and she knew that wasn’t right. Knew she had to stumble away from him, into the arms of the boy.
Another older, gray-haired man elbowed her out of the way and slammed the Victorian man into the wall, then dragged him out and down the tunnel. He was yelling at them all to follow. Claire didn’t want to; she didn’t trust them, any of them.
But the boy took her hand and said, “Trust me, Claire,” and she felt something inside that had been howling in fear go quiet.
Another wall of pain slammed into her, and she almost went down. It was all going away, everything she was, everything. . . .
She fell to her knees and realized that she was kneeling next to a man with a scar on his face. He was trapped under a fallen metal pillar, and it looked bad, really bad. She tried to move it, but he reached out and caught her hand in his. “Claire,” he said. “Get out of here. Do it now.”
He let go and rummaged through a bag that had fallen next to him. He brought out something round and dark green, about the size of an apple.
Grenade. The word floated through her mind and dissolved into mist. There was some reason she should be afraid of that, but she couldn’t really think what i
t was.
The dark-haired boy was yelling at her now, pulling her to her feet. He looked down and saw the thing, the grenade. “Dad,” he whispered. “Dad, what are you doing?”
“Get out of here,” the man said. “I’m not going to lose you, too, Shane. It’s starting to all go away, and I can’t let that happen. I have to stop it. This is the only way.”
The boy stood there, looking down at him, and then dropped to his knees and put his hand on the man’s head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Dad, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” the man said. “I need a little help, and then you need to get your friends out of here. Understand?”
The boy was crying, and trembling, but he nodded.
He reached down and took hold of the metal ring in the grenade, and his dad yanked his arm in the other direction. The pin sprang free.
“Go,” the man said. “I love you, son.”
The boy didn’t want to go. Claire practically dragged him across the room, in the direction all the others had already gone. They stopped at the mouth of the tunnel, and Claire saw the man roll the grenade slowly across the floor, until it clicked against the metal of a huge, Frankenstein tangle of cables and clockworks, pipes and keyboards.
She knew him. She was almost sure she did as he turned his head and smiled at her.
His name was Frank. Frank Collins.
Frank said, “Good-bye.”
Claire gasped and yanked Shane into the tunnel. He tripped and went down, and she did, too, and it was a good thing.
In another second, the world exploded behind them.
She woke up to a ringing sound in her ears. Her whole body ached, and her head felt like it had been filled with battery acid, but she was alive.
And she felt . . . whole. Herself again.
When she moved, she found she was pinned under a heavy, warm weight. Shane. She wriggled out from underneath and turned him over, frantic with terror that he’d been hurt, but then she saw he was breathing, and his eyes fluttered open, looking momentarily blank and oddly surprised. They focused on her face. He said something, but she pointed to her ears and shook her head. She helped him sit up, and ran her hands anxiously over him. He had some cuts and bruises, but nothing bad.
