Orange lights streaked by in irregular lines as cars cast shadows on tile walls. Surrender no longer felt like a good idea. The Seattle cop’s eyes flash red and I realize I am still inside the Barrier, just enough that they are all around me.
I slam my head against the driver’s side window, hard enough to crack it. My head leaves an impact mark surrounded by spider web lines. I am losing it. I feel sick, anemic...like my blood leaches out of me as they pull at me.
I keep my foot jammed on the accelerator as I lean over and snatch at Revik’s seat belt, miss, grab for it again, hooking it in my fingers.
A car slams the GTX from behind, and I lose the silver buckle, curse.
The third time, I dragged the nylon belt over his body and hooked it into the clasp at his side. His skin glistened with sweat, but he looks overly pale.
I hit him with my fist, hard in the side of the head, trying to wake him.
In doing so, I lost control of the car, slamming into the guardrail, leaving more paint and metal as sparks flew before I got the car off the rail again.
Sunlight washed into my eyes, slanting through the windshield as we flew out of the second tunnel. Before me stretched a long bridge with water on either side. The ramp aimed straight for the lake’s surface where the bridge floated on top of the water.
I glanced at Revik.
“Mortal peril,” I muttered. “...Mortal peril.”
I didn’t think. Even so, I saw every flash of metal and sunlight as I swung the wheel. Veering behind a green Jetta, I made a straight line for the right guardrail, beyond which lay nothing but sky and the waters of Lake Washington.
A thick, protective rail stood between us and the water...
...but my mind seems to clasp it somehow, fold it, or maybe not my mind, but suddenly I can see through it...
...and we are through.
Exhilaration lifts me as the car soared.
Then gravity clutched the GTX at the top of the arc. Its nose tipped.
As water rushed to meet us, I could only hold onto the steering wheel, flashing to being on a runaway horse as a kid, where I’d clutched a mare’s black mane, screaming in fear and hysterical laughter. If a thought could have formed in my mind just then, it may have been about death...the transitoriness of all things.
Instead, there was a long, slow silence as the water rushed to meet.
THE GRILL SLAMMED into the surface of the lake with an enormous splash.
On the bridge, cars swerved, honking, slamming into one another.
An 18-wheeler’s brakes screeched as it followed the GTX’s trajectory towards the gap in the rail. A woman in a Toyota glimpsed round, rough-cut holes in the grill and front fender of that same truck as the metal trailer skidded past her view. It seemed about to follow the GTX over into the lake itself, when the driver swung the wheel, throwing the cab perpendicular as it slid towards the gap in the rail.
The truck’s trailer slammed metal, bending it outwards.
When it finally came to rest with a shudder, the cab faced north, like a dog peering over its shoulder.
In a daze, people exited their vehicles.
Several walked to the rail overlooking blue-gray water. The scream of sirens could be heard approaching from the other side of the tunnel; the dull thud of news and police helicopters grew audible overhead.
All of the onlookers simply stared down at the lake’s depths, at the rings of wavelets forming a perfect circle in the otherwise calm surface. They all looked at that same spot in the water in the center of those rings, searching for the thing they had witnessed smash through a two foot guardrail and fly out over an early morning sky.
But the GTX was nowhere to be seen.
10
SEATTLE
COLD GREEN SHIMMERED around me, clouds of sand and rising bubbles.
My mind flashed to Monterey Bay Aquarium as a kid, seeing the jellyfish on the other side of the glass as they opened, closed, opened, closed...but this time, glass and metal trapped me inside the tank and freezing cold water, instead of the other way around.
Still feeling dazed and only half-there, I grappled with the car door until fingers gripped my arm, causing me to turn. Once I did, I saw Revik through the green water, eyes open, his long fingers seemingly drained of blood. The knuckles of his other hand bled in red clouds and the window frame behind him bled upwards into the water from an odd-shaped smear, like watching a film happen in reverse.
No Barrier, he sent, so softly I barely heard him.
My mind, everything about me, remained oddly calm.
I squeezed his arm to let him know I understood.
I’ve always been able to see well in water.
Revik hit the locking mechanism of his seat belt clumsily, rising to thump up against the roof of the car as the belt slid off his chest. It was only then that I realized the car was still sinking. Blood swirled around us from his his head and hand. He pedaled his arms to reach me, grabbing for the strap of my own seatbelt, fumbling with the clasp and hitting the button to unlock it from around my body...which still hadn’t occurred to me for some reason.
He got it undone, then held me to keep me from rising too fast.
My body hurt...badly enough to bring the first real flickers of fear.
My limbs only half-cooperated as I jerkingly swam for the open driver’s side window at the prompting of his hands. I’d always been able to hold my breath under water for a long time, too. Jon would time me at the community pool when we were kids, taking bets...but now I was starting to worry about air. I had no idea how far down we were.
I pedaled through bubbles like a crippled dog, aiming my body at the window.
Shards of glass nicked my cheeks and arms...then grated on my leg until I jerked away from the edges of the window frame, emitting a garbled sound as I kicked my way through.
Then I was on the other side, in open water.
I watched the car roof and hood as the GTX sank below me.
Revik swam past me then and I felt his fingers tug my arm, pulling on me to follow.
Looking up, I glimpsed rays and sparkles of light through chunks of green plant matter, remembered anti-drowning training and followed the bubbles. The tugging on my arm grew less once I was swimming alongside him...until I saw clouds and patches of blue sky through a window of clear water. Then he pulled me roughly sideways, guiding me under the surface before I could reach the open air.
By the time he let me rise, I was panicking for real, fighting to pry off his fingers, and the sunlight was gone.
He didn’t let go until we breached the surface together, gasping.
Once I’d filled my lungs with air, choking out the water I’d inhaled, I looked up. We were under the bridge. Land lay a few hundred meters behind where I watched Revik tread water. I glanced at it, saw mostly greenery and rocks, then looked back at Revik himself, watching him gasp to regain his own breath. Massive cement pillars stood to either side of us, and the thundering sound of cars on the bridge overhead echoed over the water.
The sound touched a memory in me.
Something about it brought a wave of fear, and I shivered.
I was still staring up at the underside of the overpass, when Revik’s fingers circled my arm. I felt an apology there, but also fear, enough to take my breath. He looked different with his hair slicked back, and for an instant, I could only stare at his face. I almost didn’t recognize him with how pale he was, exaggerated by the wet hair and the blood on the side of his head.
Only his eyes and mouth looked the same.
“Don’t go into the Barrier.” He was having more trouble than me regaining his breath, and I watched him struggle to speak. “Not even a little, Allie. If they find us––”
“It’s okay,” I told him.
He shook his head. “No. It’s not. Only talk to me like this. Promise me...”
I stared at his face, worried. He didn’t look good.
“Can you swim?” I said.
He looked back over his shoulder, towards shore, still holding my arm, only now it felt like he was using me as a flotation device. I felt him hesitate, as if thinking about my question.
When I started swimming towards land, though, he followed.
WE REACHED THE rocky shoreline, stopping at each set of cement pillars to let him rest. As if by mutual assent, we didn’t get out of the water right away but traveled south, sliding from one private dock and mooring to the next in a slow procession down the shoreline.
The morning sun disappeared behind cloud cover, which helped turn everything gray when police boats skimmed the water on their way towards the bridge.
I heard the thwup, thwup, thwup of rotary blades, and couldn’t help but follow them with my eyes. Some of the helicopters looked military. I wondered if they were Sweeps, anti-terrorist from our own government, or just navy from down the coast in Tacoma.
We hid under one dock and then the next until our teeth chattered, waiting for them to circle and pass. We didn’t speak, and I tried not to worry as Revik’s breathing grew ragged. Just as the activity really exploded around the bridge and the submerged GTX, we climbed out into a public park, wading over and through thick vegetation that surrounded the last bit of water before it dumped us out on a wide, manicured grass lawn.
I helped him into the trees.
I was likely more conspicuous with my tattered waitressing uniform and bare legs, but he looked worse than me, and not only because of the blood still running down one side of his face. I could only hope no one saw us until we entered the forested park, where the trees made us at least as inconspicuous as your average homeless person. Once we were well out of sight of the shore, I helped him lean against a tree, then slide down to sit.
He was shivering by then, so pale he looked dead.
I looked around for something I might cover him with, then decided speed mattered more. At the moment, the cops were focusing on the car itself. Once they saw no one in it, I knew that would change, and fast.
The adjoining neighborhood didn’t look rich enough to have a grid along the entire coast. If it did, we were screwed already, since our presence would have been recorded and sent automatically to SCARB and local law enforcement. Even so, I had to assume regular, mid-grade upper-middle class suburban security, which meant towers on the streets that took timed images...maybe flyers at night, depending on how paranoid the neighbors were.
Still thinking about this, I squatted next to his legs.
“Revik.” I grasped his arm, tighter, until his eyes opened. “Don’t go to sleep. You can’t sleep, okay? I need to know I can trust you if I leave.”
“There is a safe house—”
“You told me,” I said patiently. “But we’re not going to make it like this. You said it’s downtown, right? And you can’t do anything in the Barrier. So we need to do it the human way. I need to get us clothes. And at least one local ident card, to get us past the gate.”
I saw him look at the wet uniform clinging to my body, my blood-matted hair. He nodded.
“Okay.”
“Okay,” I said. “Don’t fall asleep.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise, Allie.”
I SLID THROUGH a row of bushes, trying to avoid the road while staying on the edge of park that backed up against the nearest street full of wealthy homes, all of which lined the coast of Lake Washington. I looked for signs of burglar alarms, avoiding houses with cars in the driveway or where I could hear voices or feed stations blaring off screens through the windows.
Thank god, Seattle was nothing like San Francisco.
I found an open back door with no external cameras I could see at about the fourth or fifth house I checked. From a slight rise overlooking a set of backyards that formed a gentle curve around that part of the lake, I spotted the clothesline first and stopped. My fingers clutched the trunk of a tree as I looked for people in the windows and adjacent yards.
Men’s clothing hung from the sagging cotton rope between two maple trees. I saw sheets on another line that went to the other side of the Craftsman-style house. Women’s clothes hung there also in a more colorful line of blues and purples, and what looked like a child’s, but that line was much closer to the back of the house. It was the men’s clothes that drew my eyes. I found myself hoping they were dry, even as I measured the length of the pant legs with my eyes, wondering if they would be remotely close enough to fit him.
A moment later, I slid through a gap in the tall evergreen shrubs that hid the back of the house from the lake’s shore, avoiding the actual footpath and its stone steps down to their private dock. Stepping along the fence, I got as close to the line as I dared without breaking cover, then reached out to tug off a pair of jeans and baggy sweats, grabbing a long-sleeved T-shirt and an only slightly damp sweatshirt from another section of line.
Taking my bundle back into the hedge, I didn’t wait but pulled the bloody and ripped-up white waitressing blouse over my head and left it in the bushes. Then I writhed out of the black miniskirt and even my underwear so that I was stark naked, and freezing my ass off. In less than a minute, I’d pulled on the long-sleeved tee and jeans, rolling up the cuffs on the latter so they rested on the top of my feet and folding over the waist to keep them up without a belt. I left the sweats and sweatshirt in the hedge and looked back up at the house itself.
That’s when I noticed the back door was open.
At first it made me panic. I wondered if someone had seen me, or come outside to collect clothes. When I didn’t hear or see anyone after a few minutes, however, I decided the door had already been open when I got there.
I hesitated only a half-second longer, then crept forward.
I knew we needed money, and this was better than mugging someone.
Time was an issue, too.
I walked to the back door, moving quietly. I tried not to think too much about how I must look, with my hair bunched up with lake gunk in it, my arms and face bloody and bruised. I told myself that these people could afford to be robbed, with a house like this on the lake...and if they found it disquieting that someone had snuck into their house while they were at home, well, that was a small price to pay.
It still didn’t feel great, though.
I peered into a large but dated kitchen with dark oak cabinets and white-tile counters. The linoleum was clean but faded from its original flecked gold and white. On a butcher-block cutting board, I saw an actual homemade pie. Staring at it, seeing the dark berry puree bleeding out of the crust, I felt my stomach grind into a hard knot.
Tiptoeing around the pie to the refrigerator, I opened the door softly, glancing over the contents before grabbing a container of milk and quaffing it. Setting it down carefully so as not to rattle the metal shelf, I pulled out a package of bread, then another plastic package of what looked like real cheese, probably from one of the local farmer’s markets.
As I closed the door softly, I caught sight of the entryway table. On it sat a leather purse, worn to a pale beige from years of use. It looked like something my mom would buy and wear into nothing, too, and suddenly I felt a little sick.
Shoving aside my lingering guilt, I walked with painstaking care down the hall, conscious of any loose floorboards as I lifted and placed my bare feet. I reached the purse and opened the snaps, wincing at the faint click before I tugged it open.
The woman’s wallet lay on top, a faded Gucci with a white and brown pattern along the coin purse. I opened it quickly and quietly, found an ident card and breathed a sigh of relief in spite of my guilt. Tugging it carefully out of the side pocket and shoving it into the front pocket of the stolen jeans, I closed the purse, then hesitated again, seeing the woman’s headset.
I could leave both in the taxi. Minus a few credits, the woman would probably get them both back without too much of a hassle; the cabbie would be legally obliged to turn them in, and they were both coded to her. Hesitating only
a second longer, I snatched up the headset, too, and turned for the back door.
I found myself facing a four-year-old boy with dark eyes and dark hair. His mouth fell slightly open as he stared up at me, his eyes growing wider and wider. My heart thudded in my chest, but I held up a hand to reassure him.
“It’s okay, kid,” I whispered. “It’s for a good cause. Tell your mom I’m really sorry.”
The kid stared at me, his almond eyes growing wider still.
Then his mouth dropped open for real.
“Mom!” he shrieked. “Mommy! There’s a dirty lady in here! She has my sammich bread! She has my sammich bread!”
My heart stopped for a half-beat.
...Then I bolted, leaping over and past the boy.
I landed off-kilter on one foot, picked up my weight, stumbled for the door, limping on the ankle I’d just twisted. I knocked into the door frame as I ran by, smacking my shoulder and making a loud clattering noise that echoed into the small clearing.
A screech of lake-rusted hinges followed me as the door swung behind my erratic path. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the door hung crooked on its wooden frame.
I didn’t look back again.
At the small opening in the hedge, I scooped up the clothes I’d stolen for Revik, then ran behind the denser vegetation and through the next backyard over. I made it back up to the wooded park above the row of homes a few minutes later, trying not to think about whether Revik would still be there.
Panting, I ran up to the cluster of roots on to the tree where I thought I’d left him.
He wasn’t there.
My heart stopped again, until I realized I’d gone to the wrong tree.
I found him after I’d already started to panic, skidding to a stop when I saw his long legs splayed. When I saw his eyes closed, I panicked, sure he was dead...but they fluttered open as soon as I crouched beside him.
“I didn’t sleep...” he said. “I didn’t.”
Relieved beyond words, I kissed him on the mouth.
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