by Barry Lyga
“Girl power!” Zak shouted into the microphone. Moira arched an eyebrow at him. “I dunno,” he mumbled off-mic. “It felt right.”
“Now, don’t go panicking,” Moira said into the mic, “because we have no desire to hurt you. In fact, as soon as we pull into Battery Landing, we expect you all to get off the train and run for your lives. And…”
She nodded to Zak, who leaned over and hit the alarm icon. A blaring siren sounded throughout the cabin, as well as the cars.
“That sound you hear means the authorities have been alerted, so they should be on hand to evacuate you as soon as you get off the train.” She and Zak exchanged a look. Is that all? she asked with her expression.
He shrugged back. Yeah, that’s good.
“That’s all,” she said. “Have a nice evacuation, and thank you for riding Aero Rail Transit. Oh, and stop treating women like pets.” She clicked off the microphone and slumped back against the bulkhead. If they hadn’t been committed before, they were now.
“I’m glad that’s over,” she said.
“Not yet,” said Zak, and when she looked, she saw that he’d stood up and aimed the stun stick at her.
FIFTY-FOUR
Khalid helped Dr. Bookman down the stairs to street level. The man was still shaky—literally, his body trembled with every step. Whatever his voodoo spell had done to him, the effects lingered. Maybe they would be permanent. But Khalid had recovered an older Wonder Glass from one of Dr. Bookman’s bookshelves and used it to page a car service. They had to get to Battery Landing.
“He’s been going back and forth. For centuries. Constantly exposed to the Secret Sea. To the same quantum foam we use in electroleum. He’s attuned to it.”
“What are you talking about?” Khalid demanded. “Slow down; make sense.”
“He exists outside of physics,” Bookman rambled. “The Secret Sea is what remains of the creation of the universe. He’s soaked in it. His power is subtle but large. The Secret Sea connects universes and also subsumes them. Each world is a wave. You find our physics strange here, Khalid? The physics of the Secret Sea is the physics of the big bang, of the moment of creation. No one can know what effect that would have on a spirit.”
They reached street level. Khalid helped Dr. Bookman prop himself up against the wall and then checked for the car. It hadn’t arrived yet. Khalid took a deep breath and made a decision.
“Look,” he said, grabbing Bookman by his lapels, “you have to start making sense now. Or we’re not going anywhere.”
Dr. Bookman took a deep breath and steadied himself, both hands against the wall. He still shook and shivered, but he finally managed to meet Khalid’s eyes with his own.
“It’s the spirit,” he said. “The Godfrey spirit.”
“What about it? Him, I mean.”
“That much electroleum … that kind of energy…”
“Stay focused, man. Talk to me.” Out of the corner of his eye, Khalid noticed a car slowing as it came around the corner.
“I was connected to Godfrey, Khalid. He saw inside me and I saw inside him, though I dearly regret it. What he plans to do … is monstrous. And your friends are making it possible!”
Khalid clenched his jaw. “Exactly what is he planning? Give me a hint here.”
“Electroleum in its raw state is … unpredictable. M-electrons and—” He broke off, no doubt distracted by the glazing-over of Khalid’s eyes. “Sorry. In any event, it’s unpredictable. A product of wild science. Depending on how it has been conditioned, its energies interact in different ways with the world. It can be made safe, as we use it for our lighting. But it can also be dangerous.”
“And you guys just leave this stuff lying around.”
“Of course not! That’s why it’s carefully controlled. Regulated. We can control it to a degree, and to that degree, it’s useful and safe.”
“Until it isn’t.”
“With enough of it, you could bring down the walls between universes. It could theoretically even break the barrier that separates the living from the dead, as we saw with my cockroaches.”
“‘Break the barrier.’ You make it sound like death is just another alternate universe.” Khalid blinked as Dr. Bookman said nothing, but the man’s expression spoke volumes. “Wait. Are you saying death is just another alternate universe?”
The wild scientist shrugged. “Who’s to say? We have after-death phenomena in my world, things that you would most likely call ghosts. And now we have the evidence of Godfrey, evidence that some sort of consciousness can linger after death. We would need vastly more research, but this I know, Khalid: Electroleum in its raw, pure form is dangerous and unpredictable. During processing, specific impurities are introduced to make it function in safe, understandable ways. For purposes of my experiment, I was permitted one milliliter of the raw substance.”
“And that was enough to do what it did to the cockroaches?”
“The electroleum in the room magnified the emotion and power Godfrey exuded. I had been testing other properties of electroleum entirely, but apparently the combination of electroleum and all of the energy in the room rejuvenated some of them.”
“Wow. That’s good, right?”
“How do we know?” Dr. Bookman asked with unfocused aggravation. “How? Without actual testing, how do we know what is good, what is bad? Yes, some roaches seem to have come back to life. Others died. And others simply vanished. To the living and the revived, it is very good. But what about the others?”
“I guess I didn’t think of that. To them, it’s not so hot.”
“No, indeed. Not if you’re on the killing end. Or the dying end. And I surmise that in the proper quantities and context, the misuse of electroleum could even kill a ghost.”
“Aren’t they already dead?”
“Erase every trace of it from the world, the universe.” Dr. Bookman flapped his hands. “Semantics.”
“So, then, the problem is…”
Dr. Bookman flinched in frustration. “The problem is, no one knows, Khalid! No one knows! This is why wild science is so regulated, so controlled. So that people won’t try these sorts of things! There are some things we try not to learn.”
“I don’t get it. If it works, then everyone’s alive and everything’s great.”
“No. No. Our worlds are close together, remember?”
“Right.” Khalid thought back to the apartment building, to the walls between units. His universe was a next-door neighbor to this one.
“Godfrey slipped through the thin spot in the wall between them three hundred years ago. And died there. He was stuck underground until the event you call 9/11 released him from his tomb. His power helped him survive, but ‘survival’ is not life. He did not age. He did not progress or change or learn. He only abided.”
“And?”
Bookman shook his head. “I saw it all, Khalid. You saw what he put me through. During the ritual. I was trying to contact your friend Zak. The intersection of Godfrey’s rage and the electroleum in my office…”
Khalid thought back and shivered at the memory of Bookman levitating, the blood from his mouth, the burning dreadlocks. “The guy was trapped underground for hundreds of years. That’ll mess with a guy’s manners. He’s sort of desperate.”
“He’s beyond desperate. I have performed that ritual many, many times and never before encountered such…” He paused. “I’m uncomfortable with a word that has such nonscientific implications, but: I have never before encountered such evil.”
“Evil? Doc, he’s going to help us rescue Tommy!”
“No. When he possessed me, I saw it all. It all made sense. I’m trying to explain.… Once he was free, Godfrey was able to move again. Ever since, he’s been going back and forth. He’s incorporeal, so he found a way to cross from your universe to mine and back again.”
“That makes sense.”
“But with each pass-through, he weakened the walls even further. Made them thinner.”
“Now actual physical matter can cross over. Godfrey cannot directly manipulate the electroleum. Indirectly, however … with a physical intermediary … With Zak’s help, he plans to detonate the electroleum.”
Khalid’s mouth opened and closed like a dumb fish’s. It took long moments before he could speak, and even then he could only whisper, “Detonate? Like blow it up?”
“Yes. The result … Well, Godfrey believes the result will be an explosion that resonates not merely on the physical plane but on the spiritual one as well. That may very well resurrect Godfrey, given his special connection to the electroleum.”
“Well, that’s—”
“But at the same time, it will blow open a hole in the wall between our worlds.”
Khalid’s throat clogged and refused to work. He gagged and stepped away from Dr. Bookman’s quaking form. “What does that mean?”
But he knew. What if one apartment was on fire when you knocked down the wall? Or what if the fire was inside the wall to begin with?
He remembered Zak’s vision in the subway, the water flooding the tunnels.
And he thought of the teeny, tiny amount of electroleum in Dr. Bookman’s office. And what had happened when Godfrey unleashed his power there.
“There’s no way to tell what will happen,” Bookman said. “The Secret Sea flows betwixt our worlds, and it is not merely water, Khalid. It is the ur-water, the Platonic ideal of waterness. It is physical but also metaphysical. Should that be released into a physical universe…” He shook his head. “I cannot begin to comprehend the ramifications.”
Khalid swallowed. “Is that what’ll happen? Are you sure?”
“No, I’m not. But something will happen. Even in the absolute best-case scenario, opening the path between our worlds so explosively will be catastrophic.”
Khalid imagined water everywhere. Imagined Manhattan inundated with an endless, raging torrent of water sucked out of another universe. All of lower Manhattan, at the very least, covered in the waters of the Houston Conflux.
“Everyone will die,” he whispered. “No one will even see it coming. It’ll just happen.”
Dr. Bookman quivered like a toddler with a fever. His teeth chattered. “We have to stop them,” he stammered. “Now.”
FIFTY-FIVE
“Don’t test me, Moira,” Zak said. “I checked it before, when you were tying him up. It still works.”
Under his feet, Zak felt the slowing of the superway, and Battery Landing loomed large in the windshield. He braced himself against the chair with one hand and kept the other pointed, unwaveringly, at Moira.
“What are you doing?” Her eyes had gone wide and staring, her skin fading to an even-lighter shade of pale than usual. “We’re in this together!”
“Not anymore. As soon as we stop, you need to get out of the cabin and evacuate with everyone else.”
“Are you crazy?”
“It’ll be confusing. No one will be worried about your being uncompanioned. You can get on the ferry and go back to Manhattan, then figure things out from there. But you’ll be safe, at least.”
“Safe? Nowhere in this world is safe for—”
“Better than dead,” Zak said.
* * *
Better than dead.
She’d heard him right.
Better than dead.
“What are you saying?”
Zak shook his head. “We don’t have time.”
“Tell me!” she shouted. Stun stick be damned—she wasn’t going to let him say something like that without … “What are you planning?”
Zak’s throat worked, and his lips moved for a moment or two before he found his voice. “I have to die, Moira. It’s the only way.”
“What?” The stick. Could she grab it before he could trigger it? Were her reflexes quick enough? Were his slow enough?
“I don’t know how to sneak into the secure facility,” he admitted. “I was lying. The Dutchmen tried planning it out on the back of the blueprints, but they realized it wouldn’t work, so they decided to steal the uncharged stuff. There’s no way in.”
“Then why—”
“I can’t sneak in. And even if I could, I don’t know the first thing about electroleum. But Tommy told us. Right when we got here, he told us we’d need a ‘massive energy source.’ So I figured I’d take the direct route. Now I don’t have to figure out how to get out, either. All I need to do is floor the gas on this train and plow it right into the secure part of the facility.” He grinned lopsidedly. “Boom. Instant massive energy source.”
Moira couldn’t speak. Words failed her. On the floor, the operator grunted and thrashed against his bonds.
“That’ll kill you,” she managed at last.
“But Tommy will live,” Zak said. “The way it should be.”
Moira stamped her foot on the floor—a childish gesture, she knew, but one she couldn’t help. “Don’t talk like that! Tommy’s death isn’t your fault! It was a fluke of science.”
“I don’t expect you to understand. I have to do this. I have to save him.” Tears glimmered in Zak’s eyes, and if he weren’t being such an idiot, Moira would have allowed herself to feel sorry for him.
“What about your parents?” she asked. “Think of what this is going to do to them. They already lost Tommy, and now they’ll lose you, too.”
“They’ve already lost me, Moira. We don’t know how to get home. We don’t know if we can go back home. Alive or dead, I’m still a universe away from them.”
“So you’ll kill yourself? And him?” She pointed to the operator, who groaned pathetically through his gag.
“Don’t worry,” Zak told him without turning around. “I’ll let you go just as soon as you show me how to do it. It’s the only way, Moira. The only way for Tommy to live.”
“Zak, that’s crazy. That’s … You can’t think Tommy wants you to—”
“He probably doesn’t. But I’m not asking him. Is it fair that I lived when he didn’t? Is it fair that he’s been trapped in limbo for all these years, seeing the world but unable to touch it? I’ve had twelve years. Now it’s his turn.”
“I won’t let you do this,” she said, clenching her fists.
Zak laughed. “You’re the smartest, most capable person I know, but you can’t stop me, Moira.”
As though the train had heard the word stop, it slowed further and then came to a gentle halt. Through the windshield, Moira could see men in what appeared to be security garb. A chime sounded, indicating that the doors had opened, and the men began pinwheeling their arms, gesturing to a stampede of commuters gushing from the train.
“Time to go, Moira.”
“Don’t do this, Zak.” Tears in her eyes.
“Don’t cry for me, Moira. Best thing I’ve ever done with my life. And I’m sorry you got dragged into it.”
“Zak…”
“I bet you’re going to change this world,” he told her. Then he gestured to the door.
She ran all the possibilities through her mind in the two seconds it took her to cross to the door. There were no options. She left or she didn’t. She could try to wrestle the stick away from him, but that would just leave them both trapped here. Once everyone was cleared from the station, those security guys would storm the train, she figured. Both of them either dead or arrested. Probably dead. No good.
If she stayed to help, she died. If she left, Zak died.
But Zak was going to die no matter what. It drifted in his eyes, in his posture. He’d approached his death, taken its measure, shaken its hand. He’d accepted it. Nothing she could do would change that.
At the door, she wished for something to say, something profound. But even Three Basketeers felt hollow, without Khalid.
“Good-bye,” she said lamely, and stepped out into the fleeing crowd before he could respond.
/>
FIFTY-SIX
Zak yanked the gag out of the operator’s mouth. “We’ve only got a few seconds, so let’s make it quick. It’s really simple.” He pressed the tines of the stun stick against the operator’s temple, eliciting a whimper from the man. “Show me how to make this thing plow into the electroleum reserve, or I’ll shoot a jillion volts of electricity right through your brain.” He was 90 percent certain that he didn’t have it in him to kill the man in cold blood, but that trailing 10 percent didn’t matter, because he’d lied to Moira earlier: He’d never tested the stun stick, and he had no idea whether it even worked.
“You’re nuts,” the operator exclaimed.
“Sure, whatever,” Zak said cheerfully. He’d been at peace with his decision when he made it, back in Dr. Bookman’s office. He’d known then that there was no way to save Tommy and keep his friends safe that did not involve his own death. But at the time it had been an abstract problem, a theoretical decision. Would you be willing to die for your brother? Yeah, sure.
Now that the moment was right before him, he was pleased to find that he wasn’t going to chicken out. A great and almost holy calm had swaddled him, enfolded him, sent warming waves through him. The world had shrunk to this tiny cabin at the head of the train. He was an explorer on the sea, and this was his craft. Ahead lay the edge of the world, the edge of the world and dragons.
He would live to witness their fiery breath, and not much longer after that.
“Do it,” he told the operator, keeping his voice neutral. It was difficult; he wanted to shout in joy. Wanted to explode with elation.
The operator fumbled at the panel. “You have to disengage the safety protocols and put it into maintenance mode, then—”
“Don’t describe it—do it.”
“ATTENTION IN THE OPERATOR’S CABIN!” a voice blared. “THIS IS PDNY! YOUR TRAIN IS EMPTY, AND YOU HAVE NO MORE HOSTAGES! RELEASE THE OPERATOR IMMEDIATELY.”
“Not yet,” Zak said. To the cop. To himself. To the operator, whose fingers fluttered over the controls, swiping and tapping. Zak tried to pay attention but found himself fading into reverie.
