by Dana Fredsti
“Blake’s holed up here as rear guard,” he whispered. “How ’bout you two keep going and find the others. Crows and I will take care of him and catch up to you.”
They nodded and slipped off, taking advantage of the gloom. The Pawnee scout drew his long knife and took point, slipping from shadow to shadow, completely silent in his moccasins, watching every corner, listening intently for the slightest sound from his quarry.
Abruptly he stopped, listening intently.
The white man was fiddling with his gun, and he was somewhere in the metal framework above. Crows clenched the blade in his teeth and set to climbing up the strut, quick and quiet as a spider.
* * *
The tension grew nerve-wracking. Blake continued to scan the room, waiting for his chance. Part of him hoped they might try to parley some more, but it looked like that ship had sailed. He could still hear them rustling about somewhere amid all the futuristic machinery.
Then, abruptly—nothing but silence. The absence of sound ate at him worse than anything else—it tempted his imagination into places he’d rather not go.
He caught the hint of rustling, this time from far to his left—the direction Amber and the rest had gone. Had their pursuers already gotten past him? If they had, he needed to stop them, and fast.
He’d have to leave his position. Setting the gun down as gently as possible, he silently rose off the cold metal. A furtive movement in his peripheral vision set off a reflexive alarm, but it came too late—Crows rushed him, driving a knee into the small of Blake’s back and yanking his head back by the hair to expose his neck. With one swift movement, Crows dragged the knife across Blake’s throat.
Before the blade could connect with his jugular, Blake caught his attacker’s wrist, yanking the knife-arm forward and slamming the back of his head hard into the man’s face. Gushing blood from nose and lips, the Pawnee lost his grip on Blake’s hair, and the commando twisted to follow up with two savage elbow strikes to his attacker’s belly.
Grunting in pain as he wrestled Blake for control of the knife, Crows kicked and twisted and managed to wrench his arm free. Rising up, he stabbed at Blake’s face—but this time Blake seized the momentum of the attack, pulling him into a kick-assisted judo flip that hurled the man face first off the gantry and into the dark.
Crows hit the hard concrete with a sickening crunch.
“Blake!” Rockwell roared. “I see you now, you son of a bitch!” He blasted with his Tommy gun. The thundering blaze lit up the dark like a welder’s torch, jack-hammering the steel girder that was Blake’s only cover. Gritting his teeth, Blake ducked from the sparks of ricocheting lead. His own gun still lay on the gantry, far out of reach.
The Tommy gun went silent.
* * *
Rockwell swore and tossed his gun aside with a clatter, striding out of the dark bold as brass. This was no time to cower in the shadows. After all, he was the new Sampson— hadn’t the Prophet himself declared no bullet or blade would ever harm him?
He drew his trusty pistols.
* * *
At the telltale clicking sound from Rockwell’s gun, Blake bolted from cover and ran to sweep up the Sten.
Rockwell kept walking, talking as he fired on his running target.
“Tell you something, Blake. I don’t shoot at people.”
Totally exposed, Blake crouched, firing off three quick shots from the hip. Rockwell didn’t flinch as the bullets narrowly missed his head.
Blake stood and raised the gun up for a better shot, aiming right between the big man’s steely blue eyes. The Sten clicked.
Out of ammo.
That’s it, then, Blake thought.
Rockwell didn’t miss a beat, firing back with both pistols. Blake’s body caught the bullets, the impacts smashing him backward and off the gantry.
* * *
Echoes of the gun battle rang out through the circular industrial wing, reaching the other end of the section, where Amber and the rest had already found a door to a second stairwell. Quickly, they took the stairs down as far as they could, coming to another door.
Cam pulled it open and peered in.
54
Soft-lit and calm, this new level hummed with an oddly serene grace after the grim engineering sublevel above. Here towering computer banks—each lit up with a thousand tiny lights—rose high above them in stately rows, as mysterious and majestic as a ring of menhirs. Though it somehow felt sacrilegious to run in a place like this, they hurried on until they came to another door.
A Level — Central Hub Primary Chamber
“Not too much further now,” Amber said quietly, trying not to think of Blake’s possible fate. The door slid open onto a new corridor, bending away on a long arc. Another time glitch hit, popping them further along the corridor. It was getting harder to keep their thoughts straight.
“Come on,” she urged them. “We’re running out of time.”
They followed until it came to a T-junction, a main passageway cutting across their ring route like the spoke of a wheel.
To their left came the sound of unexpected conversation. Down at the end of the main passage an argument was unfolding between two translucent figures in lab coats. One was a bookish man with serious determination on his long face. The other was very familiar.
“Merlin!” Amber ran toward them, but neither man paid her any attention.
“You think I’m worried about going to prison?” the first man said with intensity. “Or dying?”
“You can’t stop this, Iskandar,” Merlin replied.
“We’ll see about that.” He pushed past the project director, storming off down the corridor.
“You can’t stop this!” Merlin yelled after him, and then they both simply evaporated. Amber stared for a brief moment, then turned back to the others.
“I think we’ve found it.”
* * *
There was no mistaking the entrance to the Primary Chamber, even without feuding ghosts to mark the way. A great round door big enough to be a bank vault, with a heavy steel lever beside it. The entire setup smacked of power and secrets.
Amber’s thoughts raced. Blake, Nellie, Hypatia, Harcourt… and Cam. In just a moment, she would never see them again.
If they were successful.
“So… this is goodbye,” she said quietly. “If we fix this, I’ll never have known any of you. None of us will. We won’t even remember saving the world.” She paused, swallowing hard. “So even if it’s only for this one moment, and then it will be gone forever, I want you all to know that I love you.”
Nellie hugged Amber tightly. After a moment’s hesitation, Hypatia did the same.
“It’s been an honor to know you all,” Harcourt said.
Cam set down his crossbow, slipped the silver torc from around his neck, and placed it on Amber.
“For good luck,” he said.
“Cam, I can’t—”
“If we fail, you can give it back to me.” Gently he touched the side of her face.
“I…” Amber felt her resolve slipping, so she tore her gaze away from his and took a deep breath.
“Are we ready?”
Unexpectedly, Harcourt put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
“We are, m’dear.”
Together she and Cam pulled down on the steel lever. With the metallic hiss of plates sliding across one another, the doorway irised open onto the very heart of the station, the primary reaction chamber.
Except there was no chamber.
There was nothing at all, except a howling, spiraling vortex, like a black hole.
“We’re too late,” Amber said. Particles of violet light streamed into the voracious maw, the vortex drawing them all into sheer oblivion.
“Gods of my father…” Cam murmured.
How could they get to the override switch now? Did it even exist anymore? Her vision spinning, her legs began to buckle. Cam reached for her, but she waved him away and steadied herself.
She loo
ked to her companions as they stared at the horrifying sight, faces pale and eyes wide, trapped in an uncomprehending dread at the swirling blackness that drank in the light. It was as if it were dragging them away, too. Even stoic Hypatia looked horrified, and Harcourt was positively green.
“What is it?” Nellie’s voice trembled.
s“I don’t know.” Amber shook her head. “It looks like a black hole—a spot in outer space that sucks in everything that comes near it, even light. But it can’t be a black hole, or we’d already be dead. It has to be something else.”
“Whatever it is, there’s no way to get past that,” Harcourt said. “I’m afraid this might well be our curtain call.”
“It can’t be.” Nellie’s voice was flat. She looked at Amber, and then to Hypatia. “Surely we can do something.”
“Let us think,” Hypatia replied. She regarded the vortex. “It doesn’t appear strong enough to pull us inside, nor does it seem to be consuming the rest of the station. In fact, it seems confined to this one spot. Could it be a portal?” Her scientific curiosity overrode fear. “Perhaps something akin to the ones in the Shatterfield?”
“Maybe so,” Amber said, following the logic. “It must be connected to them somehow, but can we risk getting too close?” The maelstrom roiled perpetually, its movement both hypnotic and unsettling. She held her fear at arm’s length.
“Do we have a choice?” Cam hefted his crossbow, looking back down the corridor the way they had come. “We may not have much more time.” Amber frowned, but he had a point. As far as they knew, their pursuers were still coming, armed with machine guns. And the Event aftershocks were still tearing the planet to bits.
Damned if we do and damned if we don’t.
“Truly, we are caught between the Scylla and Charybdis,” Hypatia murmured, echoing her thoughts.
Amber looked at the vortex again. It did remind her of the ghostlight portals, and whatever timey-wimey hyperspace mojo was going on with them.
“You’re both right,” she said. “We don’t have a choice. Either the switch is through there, or it’s not—and if it isn’t, this is pretty much game over. So I’ll go through. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get back out again, but maybe I can connect with you telepathically from wherever—”
“If you go, I go with you,” Cam said.
Amber looked at him, filled with a sudden rage.
“It’s just so wrong that we won’t be able to remember any of this,” she said, angry tears spilling down her face. “I can’t imagine living my life not knowing you.”
“Fear not,” he said with a wry smile. “I won’t ever forget you. You’ll haunt me, even if I never know why.” His gaze carried a deep, unshakable sincerity. Amber opened her mouth to reply, but no words came. So she kissed him with all the passion she’d ever dreamt of feeling.
* * *
“Enough of that, you two,” Nellie said. “We’ll all go, Amber. At the worst, it’s choosing our own doom instead of letting it choose us.”
“Certainly not!” Harcourt shook his head. “I’ve had enough of falling through the looking glass!”
“Suit yourself, then.” Nellie turned away from him. “Let’s go, then. It’s the waiting that’s murder.”
Leaning in, Hypatia whispered, “I love you.”
Nellie squeezed her hand.
“Are we ready?” Amber asked.
Nellie looked at Hypatia. She nodded.
“Let’s go,” Nellie said. Without looking back, she added, “Goodbye, Harcourt.”
With that, the four stepped forward. One, two, three steps—the black hole swallowed them up. One instant, they were alive and well, walking and breathing, in a warm, well-lit corridor, and then they simply…
Weren’t.
55
Are we dead? The four of them seemed to be walking—or were they sleep-walking?—through one of the station corridors, but something was very wrong. How long have we been here?
To call it a corridor felt wrong—it didn’t feel like a real one, it didn’t feel like anything man-made. More like they were walking through a reflection, or maybe a shadow, of the station’s hallways, if shadows could be solid things with color and substance.
It almost made sense, in an ephemeral, dreamscape sort of way.
“Are all of you seeing this, too,” Nellie’s voice was hushed, “or have I completely lost my mind?”
Amber could only nod.
There were no walls or ceiling—just a curving, stationary pathway that seemed to be suspended in an infinite ocean of blackness, punctuated every so often by a crossroads or set of steps going up or down.
Other corridors, identical to theirs, stretched out in gravity-defying inclines, above and below them, coming in or jutting out at weird angles—virtually every possible angle imaginable. A dizzying, kaleidoscopic maze all around them, an Escher print come to life.
We’re in Escherspace, Amber thought.
Spaced out randomly along each corridor, most a few meters or so apart, great spheres of hazy light hovered in place at varying distances above the floor, silent and serene. Together, the network of walkways and spheres made Amber think of old tinker-toy models of molecule and atoms.
“Look!” Cam pointed. “It’s us.”
He was right. There were other sets of them, each quartet walking their own corridor, many walking upside-down or at a forty-five-degree angle. The other sets of people, the other thems, pointed, as well. When Cam gestured, his twin did the same.
All of the Cams did.
Amber’s mind raced with questions. Which ones were the real them? Was she the real her? How did gravity work here? What would happen if she took a wrong step and fell off the path?
They approached the first of the globes on their path. The illumination inside seemed to flicker and move, reminding Amber uncomfortably of the Shatterfield again. This one was about two meters across, hovering about a meter off the floor and taking up an uncomfortably large portion of the walkway.
The surface rippled with a weird effervescence, a million tiny stars floating up toward them, perfectly mirroring the pinpoints that cascaded down Merlin’s eyes in all of his iterations. Some tableau appeared to be unfolding in slow motion.
She leaned closer.
“Don’t touch it!” Nellie cried out. “For god’s sake, girl!”
“I think there’s something inside this one,” Amber replied. Even so, she was careful to keep her distance.
When they looked closer, the image coalesced—a woman floating in outer space, caught up in some explosion of violet light. She wore a spacesuit of some advanced design, so formfitting it looked more like scuba gear, and she cradled an exotic instrument that looked awfully like a weapon. The suit’s bubble helmet clearly showed her bronze face and silver Mohawk.
“Merlin…” Amber gasped.
“You’re right!” Nellie exclaimed. The resemblance was unmistakable. This was Merlin in female form—complete with those uncanny, star-flecked eyes. A name was stenciled across her right breast.
J. METAA
Her silent vignette went on for about half a minute, then went back to the beginning and repeated.
“Look over there,” Hypatia said. She pointed up to another group of their doppelgangers on a nearby corridor, peering into a sphere of their own. Inside it was another Merlin, this one a monk with a shaven head, sitting in a lotus position. Ripples of visible energy surrounded him in thick waves. Their twins peered back at them, too. They were close enough for everyone to make out subtle differences between themselves and the individuals in the other group.
“Over here, too,” Nellie said, nodding her head toward a sphere below to their left. It was nearly upside-down, yet they could see clearly that the sphere contained a Victorian-era Merlin with long disheveled hair, struggling in the midst of a quintessential mad scientist’s laboratory, all Tesla coils and baroque gadgetry. Like the astronaut and the monk, this Merlin shared the same starry eyes, and like
them, his story was set on repeat.
Walking carefully around the astronaut’s sphere, they walked past the next one—where a gleaming cyborg Merlin stood in the center of a laser array—and then on to the next, where Merlin seemed to be a god-king from another world, part Aztec, part Chinese. His attire of silks and feathers was as flamboyant as a Rio de Janeiro samba dancer, and whatever power he wielded was coming from arrays of giant, energized crystals.
Everywhere they looked they saw spheres containing some new iteration of Merlin, each unique, stretching back as far as they could see. Scientists in lab coats, astronauts in space, soldiers on futuristic battlefields, wizards, psionic practitioners, shamans, robed hierophants, and an uncountable number of other, less identifiable variations.
And then they came to one that made them all halt.
This sphere’s interior was darker than most. It showed an ill-lit cavernous lab space where a colossal assemblage of machinery, instrument panels, and power cables were surrounded by levels of grated metal walkways. A man in a lab coat sat in a chair, his head lolled back. Next to him, caught in a beam of violet light coming off a control panel, stood János Mehta.
“I think I understand.”
They turned to look at Hypatia.
“These are all the final moments before the Event,” she said, “every one of them from a different world, a single strand forming a great rope. We are looking at the frayed ends.”
Amber shook her head, trying to make sense of it all.
“So… it wasn’t just our Merlin’s experiment which caused the Event—it was all these different factors, all colliding together at a single point on the timeline… putting so much stress on, well, on reality itself, I guess, that it didn’t just shatter our timeline, but all these others as well,” she said. “And Merlin is at the heart of every one of them.”
Hypatia nodded. “I believe he is the catalyst in all these dimensions. In an untold number of forms. Shattering not just the past, but the future, spanning across any number of other worlds. How staggering a concept. I struggle to comprehend it fully.” She looked almost reverent.
