Across the Universe

by Raine Winters

  “Because I didn’t do as she asked. Because she wants to rule over The House alone, with no one to question her authority. Because she’s an evil, conniving bi—”

  “I wonder where she is now. She knows you have to come out of the Watch Room eventually, so she should be waiting here for us, but she’s not.”

  I stare out at the empty eyes and twisted bodies of the dead. “We have to get to the universes. If we can save them before the Harbingers can destroy them, then any surviving Watchers connected to them will be spared.”

  “Look in front of you, Amara. Listen to how quiet it is. There’s no one left alive but us and Nim.”

  “We have to try,” I say.

  There’s only one way to the Storage Room from here, and that’s over the mountain of bodies. Walking over to the pile of corpses, I grab the topmost one under the arms and try to disentangle it from the mob. My breath comes in wet, staggered gasps as I bite back tears. Noah approaches me and sets a hand on my shoulder.

  “This won’t do any good. We need to focus on the reason we came here,” he says.

  I ignore him, tugging at arms and legs until the corpse falls free and lands with a thud in front of me. I drag it backward, over to the side of the hall. Every step I take is slow and labored under the shock that starts to take over my body.

  Noah stops me, grabbing my shoulders and spinning me to face him. He shakes me hard until I look him in the eyes. “There’s no one left, Amara. They’re all dead. I’m sorry.”

  I steady my gaze on him, watching the molten silver of my irises harden in the reflection cast in his pupils. “We have to try,” I repeat, my voice no louder than a whisper.

  “Okay,” Noah gives in. “Okay. I’ll help you.”

  We go to work untangling the hill of dead House members. Each one we wrench free is dragged to the right side of the hall to lie next to another. Noah chokes back vomit as we reach the bottom of the crowd, the stench of flesh growing strong in our nostrils. Once we’re done we step across the corridor and make our way to the Storage Room.

  We move forth on quiet feet, hugging the walls and sneaking glances around corners before turning. I feel like a rat caught in an endless maze, waiting to come upon a trap. None appears. Instead more bodies meet us, strewn out in patches along the halls.

  Finally we reach the room with the drawers. With a shaking hand I turn the knob. Noah stands to the side, tensing his muscles in preparation to pounce. When the door falls open, however, we find the chamber empty.

  Drawers hang open at odd angles. Their marble faces are cracked and crumbling. Orbs are scattered across the floor, rolling into one another with hollow clacking noises. The edge of the door hits one of the crystal balls and sends it spinning along the ground; it doesn’t stop until it meets the edge of a silver puddle. I follow the blood trail with my eyes and come to meet the blank gaze of a dead Watcher, propped against the wall with his mouth open in a silent scream. A long gash is cut into his flesh, right above his heart, and I cover my mouth to keep from crying out.

  Bending down, I pick up one of the orbs. The universe inside casts a red glow on my palm as the world within implodes. A tear slips down my cheek.

  “Are they supposed to look like this?” Noah asks, picking up another crystal ball and rotating it in his hand.

  “No,” I say. “They’re being destroyed. The Harbingers already got to them. Soon they’ll be obliterated and a new universe will be born inside the orb in the old one’s place.”

  Noah casts his wary eyes across the plethora of glass balls that cover the floor of the chamber. “I don’t see any surviving worlds.”

  Carefully, I step over the debris littering the ground and approach the drawers. Only one drawer in the far right corner remains sealed. It’s hard to notice; the face rests at the edge of the very top row and is cloaked in shadows.

  “Nim’s drawer hasn’t been opened,” I say. “My key won’t unlock it, though. We’ll have to leave it and hope the Harbingers don’t come back.”

  “What about your universe? The one that holds Earth?”

  “It’s back in the Watch Room, safe—at least for now. But the rest of the Watchers—the ones that cared for these universes—they’re all dead.”

  “What happens to the new universes? The ones that replace the old worlds?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “Before all this, it meant a new member of The House would come into being and take over the duties as Watcher. But now … I’m not sure what happens now. Elli’s undone the balance of things. For all I know, another House member may never come into existence again.”

  Noah grits his jaw and clenches his hands into fists. “We’ve got to stop her.”

  A rustling interrupts our conversation. The sound comes from the direction of the door and we both spin, our eyes coming to rest on a black-cloaked Harbinger. The entity glides through the door, the wake it makes causing the orbs beneath it to jostle into each other with the sound of clinking glass.

  I step in front of Noah instinctively, using one arm to push him back against the drawers. His weight knocks loose one of the crumbling faces and it shatters across the ground, leaving shards at my feet. I bend down, pick one up, and rush the Harbinger with a war cry.

  The depths of the figure’s hood glow red as it lifts a skeletal finger to point at me. I push through the wave of crippling fatigue that hits me and plunge the makeshift weapon into the cloak. A guttural howl fills the room as the fragment of marble slices into the Harbinger’s sinew. When I pull away a large tear in the fabric reveals a patch of oily black skin mixed with slippery red muscle. Black ooze seeps from a large wound in its abdomen.

  The red glow emanating from under the hood flickers and dies, but the Harbinger still glides toward me. Its movement is weak and stilted, and I make the mistake of dropping my defenses in light of its injury. The entity uses the window to attack, clawing at me with its gnarled fingers. I fall to the ground with the Harbinger atop me, black ooze dripping onto my face and neck as I struggle against the assault.

  Noah bends down and picks up one of the drawer faces, bringing it down so that the flat side smashes the Harbinger’s head. The figure rolls off of me and falls motionless to the ground as Noah brings the marble slab down again and again, cracking its skull and soaking its hood through with blood and brain matter. He doesn’t stop until I reach out and stay his hand.

  “It’s dead,” I tell him, trying to keep my tone soothing as I stagger back to my feet.

  Noah looks at me with wild eyes and then drops the drawer face to the ground. His cheeks are spattered with black goo and his expression is full of rage. I want to draw him into me—comfort him—but shadows flickering across the doorway interrupt me. Three more Harbingers block our path out into the halls.

  I grab Noah’s hand and turn us into smoke. We swirl around one another and shoot over the gap above the Harbingers’ heads, clinging to the ceiling and rushing down the corridor. We round corners and pass doors, all the while evading the plumes of black smoke that shoot up behind us. The Harbingers give chase all the way to our destination: the locked door across from the Archives Room.

  We turn the last corner and I flatten Noah’s cloud form against the marble wall when I see who stands there. Elli waits in the center of the corridor, blocking the entrance to the Hall of Beginnings. I try to filter our smoke up and out of sight but it’s too late; Elli catches sight of me and sneers with a malevolence that flips my gut over.

  The Harbingers close in behind us. There is nowhere to go but down, underneath the crack in the Archives Room door. Our cloud forms swirl into the chamber on the other side, flying over the desk stacked with parchment and into one of the tunnels beyond. The sound of a door slamming open after us causes me to lose focus and we tumble out of the air, hitting the ground as solid bodies.

  “Run,” I tell Noah as I jump to my feet and offer him a helping hand. He uses my arm as leverage to leap up, dashing down the hall after me a
s I lead us into the depths of the tunnel. Shelves full of books are blurs of timeworn colors as we sprint past.

  “I know you’re in here,” Elli’s voice echoes out in a singsong tone. “You can’t escape me that easily.”

  “Down here,” I command Noah, darting around a corner into a familiar corridor. I’m halfway past the rows of volumes within before I remember why I recognize the path: it’s the same one Elli took me down to find the secret room full of hidden books containing information on the Key.

  “You’re running from nothing,” Elli shouts, though she’s still not close enough for me to put a face to the words. “Eventually I’ll find you. That’s what billions of years in a place like this results in. I know The House better than anyone else here. Not that I left more than you and Nim alive, that is.”

  Noah drags behind me, his breath coming in panting gasps. I know he can’t run much farther, so I grab onto the collar of his shirt and yank him around one more corner. My fingers fumble across the spines of books as I search for the one I’m looking for.

  “You came back here, just like the prophecy said you would,” Elli continues. “Now I’ll take the Key from you and use it to unlock the ultimate power. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

  There. I find the dusty crimson volume and yank it diagonally from the shelf. The wall slides to the side in response. Instead of darting inside I skirt around it, and Noah follows me around the opposite corner. Peeking around the turn in the tunnel and holding my breath, I watch as Elli enters the passageway. Her hair is wild and her skin is stained with silver. There’s nothing left in her appearance of the friend I once knew. She sees the opening in the wall and smirks.

  “I know you’re in there,” she says, and turns into the secret room.

  I dart around the corner and reach for the shelf, slamming the crimson bound book back into place. The wall slides closed behind Elli, and the last thing I see is her crazy glare as the shelf slips back into place.

  “Come on,” I order Noah. “I bought us a few seconds, but she’ll get out soon.”

  Noah sprints over to me and we run down the tunnel. As we go I clench my hand around his and we are smoke again, darting past a cloud of Harbingers as we careen back out of the passageway and under the door of the Archives Room. We don’t solidify until we’re in the halls of The House, coming to stand in front of the locked door across the hall.

  “This is our only chance,” I say. “We have to unlock the door now, or they’ll be here before we can get away.”

  “I don’t know how,” Noah whines. His brow is covered in sweat and he strains to focus on the door in front of us. Setting a comforting hand on his forearm, I answer him in the calmest tone I’m capable of.

  “Focus on the lock. Will it to open. Maybe it’ll work. Just keep trying.”

  The hall falls silent as Noah stares at the keyhole below the knob. Several beats go by and I am convinced all is lost—that we were fools to try to open what we don’t understand—but then a click reverberates through the air and the hinges creak open.

  I stare up at Noah in wonder. His skin glows faintly with the same colored lights that filter out from underneath the door in front of us. I grab his hand, giving him a look of conviction, and pull him across the threshold into the unknown.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The hall that stretches out before us is straight and narrow and endless. The walls, floor, and ceiling are made of hematite, so polished that my reflection glints off every surface. In the distance the path tapers off into shadows.

  Alabaster doors line the corridor in uniform rows, but as soon as I focus on one they shift places, whirring off the walls and reordering themselves in a blur of pale color. There are thousands of them; they stretch on as far as the hall does, receding into the darkness at the edge of my vision. The multicolored lights that originally streamed out from under the entrance haunt the edge of my vision, coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once.

  Noah stares openmouthed as the doors maneuver out of place again, the breeze they kick up rustling his hair. “One of these must lead to the power source,” he says.

  “We’ll never find it like this—not if everything keeps moving and shifting,” I reply.

  “We’ll just have to pick one as it comes and hope for the best.”

  I turn back to the open door behind us. It acts as a window into the marble halls of The House. Across the threshold is the Archives Room, but the sight of it is blurry, as if it’s a fading memory exiled to the back of my mind.

  Just as I reach for the handle the door across the hall opens and Elli emerges. From within the Hall of Beginnings it looks as if the edges of her figure are hazy and distorted, like the color of her skin is trying to blend into the walls. Her expression, however, is sharp and murderous. We lock eyes for a moment and time seems to stop. Then she lunges.

  I slam the door closed but the act is too little too late. Elli is already across the hall, her hand slipped between the door and the frame. The wood slams down hard on her knuckles and her piercing wail echoes out, the sound muffled by the energy that hums within the Hall of Beginnings. Elli leverages her weight against me, pressing her body into the door. The hinges creak as she pushes me back one inch, two inches, four inches. She is stronger than I am and she knows it; I can’t hold onto my footing forever.

  Noah joins me in my efforts but there’s little he can do. Elli’s already got half her body through the crack in the door. With one final push she squeezes past the opening and then she’s in focus again, grabbing at me with clawed fingers.

  I duck out of her grasp, take Noah’s hand, and run into the depths of the hall. Doors whir around us as we go, snapping back into place for only a few seconds before lifting off the walls and rearranging themselves again. Elli’s footsteps echo out as she closes in behind us. She holds her silver dagger in one hand, brandishing it with the sharp edge pointed in my direction. Any minute now she’ll close the gap between us and sink the knife into my back.

  The doors click into place again and I take the opening to dodge to my left and turn one of the knobs. Without hesitating I drag Noah in after me and slam the door shut behind us just as the threshold begins to whir again.

  Silence greets us, but not the type found in the void. This quiet is peaceful and reassuring, lulling me into a false sense of security. The room around us is pure white and shimmering. Though I can feel my feet on the ground, I can’t tell where the floor meets the walls, or if there are even boundaries to this place at all. The door we entered through hangs suspended behind us, its frame a starkly sharp outline against the white illumination that surrounds it.

  “Do you think Elli will follow us in?” Noah asks.

  “She can’t. The door’s already moved. She’ll never find it,” I reply.

  Noah looks around, stunned by the blinding white that fills the space. “Where are we?”

  I open my mouth to answer but am distracted by a pinprick of color forming in midair. I make my way over to it, extending an arm in its direction but stopping short of touching it. The pale dot grows bigger now, sprouting spirals of color that shoot outward to form the blurry contour of arms and legs. A figure floats before me now, huddled in a fetal position as tendrils of color shape and form its features.

  “This room is where House members come into being,” I say, understanding now. “It’s the opposite of the void.”

  The rays of color grow larger, shooting out in every direction. One collides with my forearm and I feel a sharp, burning pain there. I stumble back into Noah, trying to avoid the energy that crackles and spirals around the growing being suspended in the center of the room.

  “We’re not meant to be in here,” Noah says. “It’s for beginnings, not middles. The force will kill us if we stay.”

  “How do you know that?” I ask, dodging another beam of light before it lashes me in the face.

  “I don’t know. I can just feel it—kind of like how I felt my way throu
gh the lock before.”

  I concentrate hard and realize I can sense what Noah feels, too. Backing up to the door while keeping my eyes on the tendrils of color, I fumble for the doorknob. “We’ll have to take our chances in the hall,” I say.

  My palm wraps around the handle and the door swings open. We tumble backward into the hall and before I can even look back the door is moving again, whirring down the corridor and out of sight.

  I look up and down the passageway, but Elli is gone. “She must’ve gone in another door to try and search for us,” I guess.

  “Or to search for the power source,” Noah replies.

  “Then we should do the same. We’ll just have to pick doors until we come across the right one.”

  “What if we run into something dangerous, like where we just were?”

  I shrug. “That’s a chance we have to take.”

  The doors settle back into rows and before I can change my mind I wrench one open, leading Noah inside. The door closes behind us as we appraise the chamber we’ve entered into.

  This room is more like the main hall. It’s made of polished hematite and illuminated by lights shining through cracks in the ceiling. The glow casts eerie patterns across the floor. Lined up in rows that go on forever are clear tanks of varying sizes, each one filled with a hazy liquid. I walk over to one, press my hands against the front, and jump back in horror as an arm thuds against the glass on the other side.

  The water stirs and from out of the murkiness a life form emerges. It has blue skin and wildly wagging appendages. I recognize it immediately as the same race I met when I entered Oman’s dying universe.

  “Amara! Come look over here!” Noah exclaims.

  I walk over to the row of tanks opposite me and gasp. Each one contains a figure floating in the hazy liquid within. Some of them look vaguely human, while others are monstrous and misshapen.

  “Beginnings,” I mutter, the purpose of the hall dawning on me. “These are all the beginnings. The first life forms of their kind. One from each universe.”