Once I am able to travel to Dimension C, I will locate an object significant to Sergei Petrov—that is, an object that Petrov has personalized to a high degree. I will carry this object back to Genetrix, and we will then use this object to summon Petrov specifically, since it is infused with his magical energy.
As a reminder, without a significant object to guide the working, the target is unlikely to respond to the summons to move to another universe—the object will work upon his mind such that when we speak our invitation, the target will hear it in the voice of a lost loved one, which he is more likely to trust. If he accepts said invitation, even momentarily, he will begin the process of entry. We, meanwhile, will attempt to steady the time fluctuations inherent in inter-universe travel so that Petrov doesn’t arrive in Genetrix at some point in the distant past or future.
I will need a magical assembly of about ten skilled magic-users, a group that must be cobbled together from the Council of Cordus, for maximum secrecy. The purpose of this memo is to brief you on my plan of action as well as to request approval for the assembly required for the summoning.
Let me know if you have questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Nero Dalche
TOP SECRET
39
SLOANE DREAMED ABOUT the Drain. Matt, stepping too far, getting drawn into it as if tugged by an invisible thread. His body coming apart, arms popping out of their sockets, his heart bursting like a balloon. Esther, screaming, her cheeks stained with ash and the spray of blood. And Sloane rooted to the spot, her feet bare and then, a moment later, encased in concrete. He was there too—she felt him behind her, the same way she sometimes felt it when someone was staring at her.
She looked over her shoulder, and he was there, the Dark One, and he was Nero, face flipping back and forth between the one she remembered and the one she had seen on Genetrix, like the pages of a book caught in a breeze.
She woke with her hand in a fist in the blanket she and Mox slept on, her body shaking. Mox’s arm tightened around her waist. He had fallen asleep with it there, heavy against her ribs, his fingers twitching as he dropped deeper into sleep. She turned over to look at him. He was awake, dark eyes alert.
“Okay?” he said.
“Yeah,” she replied. “Just a dream. You?”
She realized, belatedly, that she hadn’t woken up because of her dream but because of a loud crash. A cardboard box had gone flying across the room and hit a wall, sending individually wrapped bars of soap scattering in all directions.
“Same,” he said, and he got up.
Well, Sloane thought, at least they had that in common.
The sun had just risen, and Sloane was already wound so tight, her head ached. She did everything she was supposed to: brushed her teeth (with Mox’s borrowed toothbrush), splashed water on her face, got dressed, ate breakfast, put on the siphon, reviewed the map she had drawn the night before. She knew the way, and she even knew this feeling, that she might be walking to her own doom.
They met Ziva at the entrance to the safe house. She was shrouded in dark fabric, a siphon covering her mouth and hiding the hole in her jaw. When she saw Sloane, she reached into her pocket and took out the pair of scissors Sloane had kept under her pillow that first night with the army.
Something in Sloane cracked, and she laughed. Giggled, really, until some of the tension bled away.
Mox’s eyes crinkled like he was smiling, but it was hard to tell—he wore a siphon over the lower part of his face, though a sleeker one than she had seen him don as the Resurrectionist. It was a seamless metal plate etched with feathers, like a flock of birds descending. It didn’t warp his voice, as the other one had, and Sloane was glad. There was something warm and round about his natural voice, and she didn’t want the Resurrectionist in her ear on this mission.
“I did a quick scan of the area,” Ziva said. “There’s no sign of the Army of Flickering anywhere. I think, since he intended to lure you with the boots, Sloane, that he’s left us a clear path to the Camel.”
“Well, that’s a small mercy,” Mox said. “Never thought I’d be happy to hear Nero’s expecting us.”
“He’s expecting something he won’t get,” Sloane said. “I won’t be going alone, and I won’t be going to him. You figured out your distraction, Mox?”
Mox nodded. “Distraction’s easy. But one big enough to pull most of the guards out of the Camel, well . . .” His eyes glinted. “That’ll be a trick.”
They walked a block down to the Thirty-Fifth Street bus stop. An old woman waited there, her head wrapped in a floral shawl, a basket of pamphlets at her feet. Sloane was close enough to see the title: “The Lord: Genetrix’s First Magic-User; How Magic Can Be Worship.”
The bus pulled up a few minutes later. Sloane let the old woman climb the steps ahead of her, then paid all three of their fares at once so the bus driver wouldn’t look too closely at Ziva. At Sloane’s instruction, Mox had not dressed like the Resurrectionist but in the fashion she had seen some of the younger Genetrixae wearing, all ripped denim and heavy leather jackets and muted colors. Nothing that would cue any memories of the city’s hooded, siphon-clad menace.
She led the way to the back of the bus and nestled against the window with Mox beside her. Ziva took the third seat, tugging her hood down over her eyes and slumping back like she was asleep. The cast of her skin was still unearthly if you looked at her closely, but they just had to hope no one would.
The bus lurched down 35th Street toward Comiskey Park—or whatever they were calling the place where the White Sox played on Earth. There, just beyond the stadium, they would get on the Red Line train going toward the Loop, where they could access the underground tunnels of the pedway. If Genetrix’s Chicago had a pedway. Sloane was trusting her memory of Chicago history to guide them.
35th Street was wide and flat with low buildings on either side, most of them made of Chicago’s favored red brick. It looked so much like it would have on Earth that Sloane felt, for snatches of time, like she was home. Then she would see a dingy sign in a shop window advertising cheap siphon repair or discount oscilloscopes or notice a bookstore boasting of selling all ten volumes of Basic Practical Workings for the Average Siphon User and she would remember where she was and that her mission wasn’t complete. Had never been complete. She had yet to kill the Dark One.
Up ahead, in the distance, she could see a tall structure that had to be the stadium. She had been there twice in the past ten years, once incognito, with a White Sox cap shading her face, and a second time for the Crosstown Classic, sitting in the Sox owner’s box with Matt. She had spent most of that game with other people’s phones in her face, trying to smile for selfies.
When the bus drew closer to the stadium, though, Sloane frowned. The old Comiskey Park had been demolished on Earth in the early 1990s. It had been replaced by a bigger stadium with taupe outer walls and a towering upper deck. But on Genetrix, the face of the structure was still wide and white, with the words COMISKEY PARK in blue across the top. It was the original. She was sure of it.
“I can’t believe it’s still standing,” she said quietly to Mox.
“They were going to rebuild it, but some Unrealist architects offered to use some of their techniques to support it and expand it . . . backward, or in reverse, or something,” Mox said. “So they kept it.”
Sloane grinned. She would have to revise her opinion of Unrealists. “Even though no one cares about baseball here?”
“Oh, it’s not for baseball anymore,” Mox said. “It’s a track-and-field stadium.”
“That’s it. This obsession with ancient Greece and Rome has gone too far.”
They cruised past the stadium. Beyond it was the interstate and the Red Line station’s entrance on the 35th Street overpass. They used the back doors of the bus to exit there, getting out right by the awning of the train. She went to one of the machines to get passes for the three of them, leaving Ziva hunched by the curb, f
acing traffic, and Mox looking out over the interstate.
Behind the machine was a Genetrixae message board, a public corkboard with flyers pinned to it. Most of them were requests for partners in complex workings; any group larger than three was called an assembly. It was, evidently, how they transmitted information without the internet. Cyrielle had seemed confused that people would want to sit down and stare at a video rather than do something on their own. Why be on the internet when you can set things on fire with your mind? Matt had said with a shrug.
She hoped he was okay.
Hit with another wave of nervousness, Sloane waved Ziva and Mox over and handed them their passes. Together they went through the turnstiles and walked down the ramp to the Red Line platform. There were more people here than there had been on the bus—more people to notice Ziva and Mox, but also more people to ignore them, bury them in a crowd of people going to their jobs.
A group of women near the end of the platform wore loose, gauzy robes in all the colors of the rainbow that shimmered when they moved. One of them had her hair tied up in a scarf that was equally colorful. They were like caricatures of tarot readers, their bracelets jingling, eyes wide as they peered into the future. After meeting Sibyl—paranoid, magic-hating Sibyl—Sloane thought they looked ridiculous. Who wanted to see the future anyway?
But there were other nods to magic-users of the past among the people lined up on the platform. A teenager in a magician’s top hat and white gloves—the rest of his clothes were more typical—stood next to a girl with a flower crown, like a nymph. A woman standing near them wore a large, elaborate amulet; her companion had a high, face-framing collar, like something out of Snow White.
“Everything’s gotta be ironic now,” Ziva said, her voice gritty from the siphon. “You don’t see me wrapping my entire body in bandages or something.”
“You could make a convincing Frankenstein,” Sloane said. “Just stick real bolts in your skull.”
Ziva narrowed her eyes at Sloane.
“I saw someone in a pointed hat the other day,” Mox said, shaking his head, “casting runes on the sidewalk. Some guy tripped over one, almost fell flat on his face.”
The light of the train caught Sloane’s attention. It was approaching their stop. Sloane steered them away from the people in gauzy robes and toward one of the middle cars.
The train wasn’t the sleek silver Sloane was used to; it was older, painted brown along the bottom and orange along the top. The sides were flat, the edges squared, like a shoebox. Inside, the seats were plush and arranged in forward-facing rows, but there was a small alcove in the back where the seats faced inward, separated from the rest of the car by a barrier. Sloane elbowed a man in red suspenders to get there first. The barrier would be useful for hiding Mox and Ziva.
Ziva sat in one of the seats, Mox across from her. Sloane stood so that she was blocking the aisle between them and looked out the windows as the train pulled away from the platform.
The train stopped at Cermak/Chinatown, and a woman in mint-green hospital scrubs got on, her bag tucked under her arm, along with a man in beat-up sneakers. Ahead, the tracks bent toward the lake and then plunged down, the train charging into a tunnel. All through the car, Sloane heard low, quick whistles as people did small workings like turning on reading lights or putting barriers around themselves, apparently to block out sound. It was like listening to pigeons roosting.
At the Jackson stop, Sloane gave Mox a meaningful look. The next station was theirs. The train squealed as it eased to a stop, and Mox and Ziva followed her out of the car, going past the minty-green nurse and Sneakers, who was trying a working, snapping his fingers and whistling. Whatever the working was, it didn’t seem to be going well.
They climbed the steps to street level and fell into the rhythm of pedestrian traffic—the flipping of the Walk signal, the brushing of shoulders and elbows. Ziva kept her head down, pinching the back of Mox’s sleeve so she wouldn’t lose track of him. Sloane kept him in her peripheral vision, her hair hanging loose around her cheeks.
She paused, briefly, next to St. Peter’s Church, a low stone building wedged between two glass giants. A massive crucifix was carved into its face, with Gothic windows behind it and wooden doors below. The familiarity of it steadied her. Of course, on Earth, she had never seen a man in front of it juggling balls of floating water, siphons on both wrists—but she would take what she could get.
It was another block to the Daley Center, the brown building she had recognized on her first venture into the city, Kyros at her side. On Earth, the entrance to the pedway was in the courtyard in front of it, so if it was going to be anywhere on Genetrix, it was there. She recognized the decorative grate, painted pale blue, from a distance. It marked the steps that descended underground. It was also where they would leave Mox, a block away from the Camel.
She stopped by the grate, a strange pressure against her chest as she looked up at him.
He reached up and undid the clasps holding his siphon to his face. He brushed a hand over his upper lip to get rid of the sweat that had collected there. Then he bent toward her to kiss her.
Even with stale breath and damp skin from the siphon’s restriction, with the bustle of bodies around her and the nervousness that had destabilized her, she found herself tilting toward him on tiptoes and burying her bare hand in his hair.
“Don’t fuck around,” she said quietly as she pulled away. “We all get out of this alive.”
He smiled at her and fastened the siphon over his face again. She turned to Ziva and jerked her head in the direction of the pedway entrance. Ziva pinched her sleeve right over her elbow and held on as Sloane led them down the steps.
40
THE PEDWAY SMELLED just like one of the underground el platforms: musty, like an old garage, with a hint of stale urine. The path they followed was lined with dark gray tile, cracking in some places and broken in others. But here and there, there were stained-glass windows set into the tile with a light behind them, as if they were outside. Some were leaded-glass geometry; others were swirls of color broken up into fragments or cyclones of interlocking circles in monochrome or checkerboards of lead and gold leaf.
The pedway was confusing, and only Sloane’s innate sense of direction kept her from getting lost. She had convinced Ziva, via a hard stare, to link arms as they walked; Ziva’s rotting hand was buried in her sleeve. Her arm felt fragile, like a dry branch. Sloane forced herself not to hurry as they passed the stairway that led up to City Hall. All they had to do was walk under Randolph Street and they would be beneath the Camel.
She hadn’t been sure how they would know when they were in the right place, given the lack of clear signage, but that turned out not to be a problem. Up ahead, between two grand columns over which the words CORDUS CENTER FOR ADVANCED MAGICAL INNOVATION AND LEARNING were painted in rich purple, was a shimmering veil. Sloane glanced at Ziva.
“Well,” Ziva said. “Here goes.”
Sloane stepped through the veil, and a strong wind blew her hair back and pressed her clothes to her body. The siphon on her hand lit up like a lantern, and white light danced over the back of her right hand, where the Needle had once been. Across from her stood a soldier with the seal of Flickering on his chest.
Ziva’s hood had blown back, revealing her grayish skin and bulging eyes. As soon as the wind stopped, Ziva hurried to cover her head again, exposing her peeling fingers and claw-sharp fingernails when her sleeves fell away from them. The soldier glanced in their direction, looked away, then looked back. Sloane steered Ziva away as quickly as she could without running. She didn’t check to see if the soldier was following.
“Fucking Camel assholes,” Sloane mumbled. “What kind of pervy excuse for staring at a woman’s tits is that working, anyway?”
“Shows you all kinds of things, I’m sure,” Ziva said. “Let’s just hope that fellow thinks I have one hell of a skin condition.”
They were away from the pavilion now an
d walking down a hallway of gray stone that matched the area surrounding the Hall of Summons, the one that always looked storm-dark, like it was raining outside. Sloane felt something tickling at the back of her neck, like the Needle was scratching her skin from the space between worlds.
She finally dared to look over her shoulder when they made it to the staircase. She didn’t see the soldier behind them, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t noticed Ziva or that he hadn’t gone for reinforcements. They climbed the stairs to the Camel lobby. Sloane turned away from the elevator bank and toward the hallway of stained glass that separated the area surrounding the Hall of Summons from the rest of the Camel. Green light danced over her body as they walked through it, the delicate fans aglow with daylight.
Just past the hallway, Sloane tugged Ziva into an alcove with a small stone bench in it. They were supposed to wait for Mox’s distraction, which he had promised would be loud enough for them to hear even from within the building.
They were quiet as they waited—well, as quiet as they could be with Ziva’s every breath rasping into her lungs and shuddering out of her mouth.
“Do you feel like yourself?” Sloane said.
Ziva narrowed an eye at her. The other eye seemed to be missing its lid entirely. “You’re not thinking of bringing some friends back to life, are you?”
“No,” Sloane said. “Well—it’s sort of hard not to consider the possibility once you know it exists.”
“Having considered it, then, you can now dismiss the idea.”
“So you’re not glad to be back. To be alive again.”
Ziva looked her over. It was remarkable, Sloane thought, that someone so stiff and inhuman could look so wary.
Chosen Ones Page 36
