by Neil Gaiman
I felt the tile against the right side of my face, the coolness of it sharply contrasted with the burning pain starting to throb on the left side. In a moment of lucidity, I realized I couldn’t feel that iron grip on my shirt anymore—I tried to open my eyes, and caught a glimpse of Jakon clinging to Lord Dogknife, slashing at him with her own claws. My vision seemed somehow sideways, and everything was blurry, tinted red. I crawled away from them, numb, some detached part of my brain noting the drops of blood falling from my face to splash crimson against the white floor.
The pain I’d started to feel sharpened into nothing less than agony. I felt sick. Even worse than how much I hurt was the abrupt feeling of wrongness, of my skin feeling too big for my face. I couldn’t see out of my left eye at all.
“Joe!” Acacia’s voice reached my ears over the rush of wind, the blaster shots and various other sounds of fighting. “Get out of here!”
I struggled to my knees and put a hand up to my face, fighting the wave of nausea that came over me. With one eye covered like I was about to take a vision test, I found Acacia’s lean figure through the crowd. I couldn’t tell how far away she was.
She and Avery had traded places; she was now standing over her wounded brother and using his sword to fend off attacks from Lady Indigo. There were several Walkers down here and there, some of them alone and some also being defended by their comrades.
If the Walkers hadn’t gotten here, we wouldn’t have stood a chance. Avery and Acacia wouldn’t have been able to free me by themselves. They had come, risking their lives, to save me. They were buying me time to run.
It wouldn’t help. Unless Acacia was able to defeat Lady Indigo where her brother had failed (I didn’t even know if “kill” was the right word; for all I knew, it might take more than that), Lord Dogknife would just use her to power FrostNight. He’d said so himself. It might not be as strong, but it would still continue. More worlds would be destroyed. All this fighting and all this death, and it was all for nothing.
I looked up, finding the perfect sphere sitting calm and beautiful amid the chaos, perhaps twenty steps in front of me. He comes for you, Lord Dogknife had said. It struck me suddenly, for the first time, that he hadn’t said it.
I couldn’t stop it. The words from when I’d first woken up in chains came back to me, said in a voice I couldn’t quite place. It was my voice, but not.
A sound reached my ears over all the chaos, like the white noise of a television or radio left on. As I tried to push myself to my feet, gaze locked on the floor beneath me, a pair of brown shoes stepped into my line of sight. I looked up, meeting the Professor’s static gaze.
“Running is useless, Walker,” he said. “You must know this by now. Why not accept your fate?” His voice was even and human sounding, but completely emotionless, like it was dialogue plugged into a computer. There was a kind of electronic quality to it, too, something that was too smooth, too contrived.
I ignored him, still struggling to stand. I felt dizzy and sick, like the floor was going to slide out from beneath me any moment. I cast around for a portal, didn’t sense one—but I did sense Hue, hovering worriedly nearby. Maybe he could make me a portal.
Hue, I thought, but my resolve weakened. He couldn’t hear me unless we were merged, or whatever it was he did, and anyway, the Professor was right: Running wasn’t the answer. Running wouldn’t solve anything.
I finally got to my feet, standing as tall as I could to look at the Professor. He regarded me critically, like a teacher waiting impatiently for an answer.
“The decision is yours, Harker,” he said. “Either accept your fate, as those have before you, or attempt to run. You may even make it a few steps before you are caught.”
As those have before you. The words reminded me of something else I’d heard him say when I’d been hooked up to the machine that had first powered FrostNight. You will fulfill your purpose and bring about the revolution of the world, he’d said, and Joaquim had struggled against his bonds as he realized his fate. No, he’d screamed. I don’t want to—
I remembered his face when I’d tried to help him, his dead eyes. I remembered the words I’d heard upon waking.
Isn’t this my destiny?
“Hue,” I said, and the little mudluff brightened. If he merged with me again, I’d be able to Walk anywhere. I could probably even find my way to TimeWatch itself, but I had a better idea.
Well, it wasn’t technically a better idea. In fact, it was probably the worst idea I’d ever had, and that was saying a lot.
I held out my hand to Hue and he came to perch on my palm. He seemed to sense what I wanted through the contact, and began to flow up my arm like liquid. The Professor’s eyes narrowed and he raised a hand, but I took a step toward him instead of away, and he paused.
“I know my purpose,” I told him. “It’s something that’s so much a part of me—of all of us—that nothing you do can shake it. Even when you boil us down to our very essence, or freeze us and keep us alive to help you Walk, we still know our purpose.”
Hue flowed over my body, over my face and my wounded eye. “Our purpose is to stop you,” I said. “And not even death will take that from us.”
And with that, I Walked—but not to the In-Between, or even sideways to a parallel world. I Walked exactly twenty steps forward, reappearing in front of the perfect silver and blue sphere. As I looked back, the Professor’s static eyes met mine, and the corners of his mouth tilted up in the barest hint of pleasure. I heard Acacia scream my name again, and Joeb. I saw J/O and Jai, lying still by the giant, smoking computer. Jakon and Josef were taking on Lord Dogknife, and Jo had flown over to help Acacia again. The floor was littered with Binary clones and Walkers alike, and FrostNight waited in front of me, peaceful and hungry and alone.
I turned my back on the chaos, and started forward. Like going off the diving board into the deep end, I took a running start and jumped, plunging headfirst into the heart of FrostNight.
Isn’t this my destiny?
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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HAVE YOU COME TO gloat?
As before, the words just seemed to hang in the air, unspoken but somehow still present. I opened my eyes—both of them, and I felt no pain—and looked around, but at first there was nothing to see. There was nothing but soft light, pale and colorless, and what looked like static in the distance.
“Where am I?” I asked. I looked down at my hands and my body.
The eye of the storm.
I recognized the cloth covering my arms, and it wasn’t what I’d been wearing when I went in. It was a green and black hoodie; my favorite hoodie, the one I’d been wearing when I Walked for the first time. I’d forgotten it at home—the home that was now gone—when I’d packed up some of my things and left the life I knew forever.
Yet here it was. I could feel the softness of the material, could smell the detergent my parents always used. I was wearing my most comfortable pair of jeans, and the ratty sneakers I’d worn into the ground. I felt no wounds anywhere on my body, which I knew was impossible.
I looked around again, trying to find the source of the voice I couldn’t hear. If I squinted, I could see that what I’d thought was static was actually lots of tiny numbers and letters. It was like what I’d seen back on my world. It was the swirling storm of FrostNight, and I was at the very center.
It was calm here, and quiet, though there was an underlying uneasiness boiling beneath the surface. A rage, something that felt like what you’d see in a wounded animal. Betrayal. Pain. Confusion.
“Joaquim,” I said, my own voice sounding strange to me. I sounded younger, my voice lacking the rough edge of the growth I’d already gone through. “Joaquim, this is you, isn’t it?”
That was the name we were given, the words came to me. I felt a faint rush of relief; my gamble had paid off. I’d been rig
ht about the “he” Lord Dogknife mentioned. Joaquim’s consciousness still existed within FrostNight, which meant I might be able to reason with him. I might be able to convince him to stop this.
Slowly, so slowly I thought I was imagining it at first, I became aware of little sparks of blue light. They winked in and out like stars in a cloudy sky, twinkling and seeming to move. There were more and more of them until they came together, forming a figure I recognized. He looked like me, as so many of us did.
“It is you,” I said. “You’re alive.”
I was never alive, he said, though the little blue stars that made up his mouth didn’t move.
I took a breath. Technically, he was right. Joaquim had been a clone, grown by Binary from our blood and powered by the souls of those killed by HEX. But . . . he’d had a personality, a consciousness. He’d had desires and goals, and in the end he’d wanted to live when he’d been told it was his destiny to die.
“Yes, you were. You were your own consciousness, different from the souls used to power you. You knew your identity. You considered HEX and Binary your parents, and you felt betrayed when they used you. You were alive, and you wanted to stay that way.”
He formed into something more substantial in front of me, into the person I remembered. His hair was dark, skin pale, eyes brown. I could still see the glimmering lights at certain points on his body, like he was an image superimposed over a field of stars, a constellation given form.
“You still consider yourself a child,” he said, and this time his lips moved and the voice that issued forth was the one I remembered.
“What?”
“You exist only as your consciousness here,” he explained. “As do I. You have a body because you are used to having one, and thus you give it the form you most identify with.”
“You mean, this is how I see myself?” I asked, glancing down. I wished I had a mirror, but I was pretty sure I knew what I’d see; a young, kind of goofy-looking kid who was in way over his head.
It wasn’t really surprising to learn that was how I still saw myself. It was pretty accurate.
He nodded. I looked him over, taking him in. His image was faint, like an echo, and I could see the souls used to power him far more clearly than I saw him. I wondered if this was how he saw himself as well.
“That was you I heard, wasn’t it? When I woke up?”
He hesitated. “I was not sure if you had heard me. Your consciousness brushed mine as you were extracted from your Earth.”
“What do you mean, ‘extracted’?”
“It was the Professor’s wish that you be saved for later use.”
I remembered the last few moments on my world, with all the figures swirling around me. Some of them had come toward me, covering me like a swarm of bees, and I’d felt myself fragmenting. I’d been broken down into my most basic chemistry, and re-formed elsewhere. It was basic teleportation, really.
“He wanted FrostNight to absorb me, to use my energy,” I said. Joaquim nodded. “Did you stop it?”
“It was not possible right then. The worlds that were destroyed were broken down and started clean so my parents can enforce their will upon them. Taking you at that time was not in my protocol.”
My mind whirled. He had just told me two very important things, and I wasn’t sure which meant more. One filled me with hope that was immediately quashed; the other filled me with anger.
If my world had been restarted, that meant, in a sense, it wasn’t dead. If the planet was left alone, there was the smallest chance that maybe life would evolve as it had before. There was the smallest, tiniest chance that maybe my family would live again someday. I’d be long dead by the time that happened, but it was something, at least.
The other thing was his saying my protocol. This told me something very important.
“You’re not just within FrostNight,” I said. “You are FrostNight. You’re its consciousness.”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you stop it?” I screamed at him, the words ripping themselves from me. He didn’t even blink.
“Should I have?” he asked. I stared at him, aghast, and he continued. “Why? Why should I have stopped?”
“Because you just killed—” I had to pause, the number so high I couldn’t even fathom it. “Innocent people. Billions upon billions of innocents.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “That was a side effect of my ultimate purpose.”
I continued to just stare at him. Several other thoughts were making their way through my head; if he was FrostNight, if he was its heart, maybe killing him would stop it.
The problem was, I wasn’t even sure I could kill him. Not just physically, but morally. I felt for him. Even knowing he’d allowed the destruction of an indeterminate number of worlds, including mine, I felt for him. He hadn’t asked to be created for this, and he certainly hadn’t asked to have his consciousness shoved into a mash-up of science and sorcery made for the sole purpose of eradicating all life.
Still, his unfortunate circumstances didn’t entirely excuse his lack of personal responsibility, if you wanted to break it down to simple psychology.
Personal responsibility . . .
“But you said you were sorry,” I reminded him. “I heard you, remember? You said you were sorry you couldn’t stop it.”
His whole body flickered as though he might fade out, as though I’d shaken his very reality. “Yes,” he agreed hesitantly.
“If this is your purpose, and what you want to do, why be sorry?”
“It . . . is my purpose,” he said. “I did not say it is what I want to do.”
“Then change it!”
“I don’t know how.”
“You’re a self-aware ripple in time and space with the power to recalibrate entire worlds! The how is easy—stop doing it!”
“I can’t exist any other way,” he snapped. “This is what I was made for! You’re asking me to stop existing!”
The words hung in the silence, ringing true for both of us. I just looked at him, my sympathy growing with sudden certainty. “Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly what I’m asking you to do.”
“Why should I?” he asked bitterly. “Why should I, when I could just take your power now and sustain myself forever?”
“Because what kind of existence would that be?” I asked, struggling to keep a lid on my temper. “Even if you fulfill your purpose and reshape the entire Multiverse for HEX and Binary, then what? Do you really think Lord Dogknife will wave his magic wand and make you into a real boy?”
He wavered again. “I . . .”
“Or that the Professor will grow you another body to live in? You’re made from us, Joaquim. You’re not a machine like Binary, they won’t want you. You don’t fit into their equation, their dream of a perfect, cold, and calculated existence. You’re not an entirely organic being like HEX, and you have no magic except what they gave you. And that magic,” I continued, desperate to drive the point home, “comes from us. From the things they hate.”
He stared at me, his expression saying more than his silence. He looked hurt and vulnerable, like a child. “You’re not one of them, Joaquim,” I pressed. “Of either of them.”
“And what am I, then?” he snapped, the little blue lights of his body pulsing with electric anger. “One of you?”
“Yes,” I said. “You are.”
He went still, surprised and wary. “You don’t mean that,” he said. “You are just trying to get me to stand down. Negotiation Tactics in High Stress Situations, Lesson One, Reasoning with Your Opponent by Identifying—”
“Joaquim, listen to yourself!” I interrupted. “Yes, I am identifying with you, because you’re just like me. I hate that you were made by my enemies, I hate that you betrayed us—but I hate that they betrayed you, too! You wanted to live, and you should have been given the chance. I wanted to save you,” I admitted, surprised by the words as they tumbled from my lips. “I tried to save you, at the end. I’m sorry I cou
ldn’t.”
He continued to look at me, still wary and suspicious, but I could tell he was remembering. He was remembering all the lights and the fires and the wind, and the machines we’d both been hooked up to, and how he’d held his hand out to me and I’d taken it.
“So if I’m just like you,” he said finally, keeping his tone even and betraying nothing, “what would you do? If this was your only chance at existing, what would you do?”
“I’d give it up,” I said immediately. “I would stop it.”
“You would die.”
“Yes.”
“You would willingly die?”
“To save everything? Yes.”
He stared at me, then finally shuddered and looked away. “I don’t believe you,” he whispered. “It’s easy to say you’re willing to die, but to actually do it . . . to simply not exist . . . to miss out on everything . . .”
“I’ll prove it,” I said, holding out my hand. “Take me.”
He looked up. “What?”
“Take my power. Absorb me.”
He looked at my hand like it was a trap, hesitating.
Hue, I thought at the presence in the back of my mind. This is your chance to get out now, little buddy. Tell the others it’s okay, and I’ll miss them. Tell them Joeb’s in charge.
There was the general feeling of negation from somewhere inside my head. Hue, do you understand what I’m about to do?
Acceptance.
You’ll die, bud. I don’t want that. Go on.
Negation.
Hue, go on! You have to tell them for me!
Negation, sympathy, acceptance.
You’re one in a million, buddy.
Agreement. It struck me that Hue, despite being of a race many of us feared, had proven himself time and again to be a valuable teammate. I almost laughed out loud, and I wondered suddenly if Hue might actually be one of us, too. Joseph Harker, multidimensional life-form edition. Hell, it didn’t seem that unlikely.
“Absorb my power,” I said again to Joaquim, still holding out my hand. “I have Hue with me right now, I can see and understand a lot more than if I were by myself. Let me join with you, with FrostNight, and I’ll stop it. I’ll destroy it from the inside. You won’t have to do a thing.”
