by Logan Keys
Saying a quick prayer, I close my eyes, then ram my shoulder into the thin metal.
“Shh!” Baby hisses. She waves at me after checking the hall and eyes the dent I made with awe. “Try it again!”
The second time, the door flies off the hinges.
Baby stares at the hunk of metal on the floor. “Neat trick.”
The place smells like wood cleaner and Tommy, it makes my heart ache. He’d been so afraid for me.
“Hello?” Baby says into the dark room.
I elbow her and point. Under the desk are two small feet.
“There you are,” Baby says, bending down.
I move around the desk, where two owl eyes peer back at me from the shadows. He’s scared, but not hysterical. “We’re here to help,” I say, and I guide him out by his hand.
“Where’s my mommy?”
Baby and I share a look.
When we leave the building, Cory’s waiting for us. He takes one look at the child and shakes his head, chopping a hand through the air. “No way. Are you out of your mind?”
I pass him, kid huddled up to me. Baby follows, checking for MPs.
Cory storms over to stop me. “I can’t let you do this.”
I shrug him off, pressing the child behind me. “Just help us get out through the gate, Cory. I’ll do the rest.”
“Liza, I can’t. Do you have any idea what Simon will do if he finds out I’m helping you, let alone a fugitive?”
“He’s a child, for God’s sake! I don’t imagine it could be any worse than what he’s going to do anyway. What do you want me to do? Leave him here, so Simon can … you know…” I crook my head at a bad angle. “I can’t do that. Help me through, then I’ll be gone.”
“With the Skulls? Your ideas just get more idiotic! You know, for a smart girl you certainly act—I don’t know how you made it this far—gah! I’m not going to help you get yourself killed! Is going with the Skulls much better than—”
“Being hung for treason? Can you protect me? Can you? Can you promise me that Simon won’t add me to his list of examples? Cory,” I plead, “he’s just a little boy. Let us go. I know you want to help.”
He stares at me until he’s sure I won’t budge. “Fine. But once you’re out, you’re on your own.”
Cory reluctantly helps us through a side gate, and it’s like the MPs don’t even see us. Just another moment I’m amazed by what he’s capable of.
He grabs my hand in farewell, and I turn, hoping he can see my gratitude. “Thank you,” I say, and he softens.
Then I break away from him and grasp the boy’s hand, which is sweaty in my grip. He’s got a model airplane in his other hand, and this makes me sad. What will his future look like?
Baby and I run toward the moat. When I see Phillip readying a small vessel, I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Wait! Phillip! Take them!” I say, pushing the boy toward the boat. “Can you get them to safety?”
Phillip speaks at the same time Baby does. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m not going without you!” Baby says. “You think I can leave him any more than you can?”
“I’ll be back, I swear.”
Phillip looks between us in confusion.
“Can you take them, Phillip? Just across the water. They can hide until we can figure something out. Do you have people there?”
He nods, and then shakes his head. “Yes, but no, I can’t take them. Liza, you need to come with me already. It’s too dangerous.”
“Listen, Simon’s going to—harm this child, or whatever it is he does to make his Specials. Or worse. You’re supposed to be the good guys, right? I know you have people in the wilds. Please. Just take him, and take Baby, too.”
“No,” Baby says.
“What do you want me to do with a child? It’s dangerous out there.”
“I don’t have time for this! If you don’t take him right now, he’s as good as…” I leave off the rest, so I don’t scare the poor kid.
Frustrated, Phillip blows out air, his strange eyes rolling before he nods and motions for the child to get inside the boat.
Baby crosses her arms when I motion for her to go with them. “I’m going with you.”
“Fine,” I say, and then to Phillip, “I just need a few hours. Hide him. Please.”
Phillip nods, getting into the boat. He looks at me like he believes this will be the last time.
Chapter Eighty-Nine
Liza
With MPs all over the place, Baby and I can’t get through the gate. We keep trying, but it’s no use. Several times we’ve almost been spotted.
We decide to check along the perimeter for another possible way, and when we round the corner on the backside, I crash into someone who tumbles in a flutter of white coats.
Chalberg.
“What are you—how…” He straightens. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I need to see Tommy.”
Chalberg checks to see we aren’t noticed. “Certainly not. You should be gone. There’s nothing left for you in this city. If Simon knew what you are—” He looks at Baby.
“She already knows,” I say.
“Liza,” he says in a hushed voice, “if he knew about that mark on your arm, you’d never be free again, you’d be a project.”
“I have to see Tommy.”
Shaking his head at my ignorance, Chalberg turns to leave, but I grab his coat, dig into his pocket, and pull a syringe from it. I move quickly, denial of defeat sharpening inside my chest, and press the needle tip to his neck.
He struggles, but I don’t relent, and the end digs in enough to make blood trickle.
The liquid in the syringe sloshes—black, familiar.
Chalberg gasps, shuddering.
“So, you are heading to see Tommy,” I say. “Isn’t this his special cocktail?” The doctor turns a shade of white. “I wonder what it’ll do to a normal person.”
Baby comes around and demands, “Tell us where he is.”
“The hospital,” Chalberg squeaks. “The one in the compound, not the main one.”
“Can you get us in?”
“No!”
I press harder, and he folds. “Ah—okay, all right.”
Baby nods at me, and I let him go.
Chalberg fixes his coat, fingers coming away with blood. He gazes at me first in fear, and then in acceptance, before leading the way.
Turns out, the compound has a secret entrance nearby. On the far side, just before the sand meets the ocean, a section of fencing is a camouflaged door. Chalberg shows us the way through, sweating and breathing heavily.
“Is this a hospital, or some kind of Special-making factory?” I ask, noticing how empty the area is.
Chalberg avoids my eyes, using his keycard.
“What are they doing to him?” I’m afraid to know the answer.
“Just holding him for now.”
Baby and I follow Chalberg into a dimly lit, makeshift hospital that’s been painted pale green, like a mental institution. Lining the hall are doors with thin, rectangular windows to check on the locked-in patients.
“Are there people in these?”
Chalberg doesn’t answer, but instead presses through a set of double doors at the end of the hall.
“Where are we going?” Baby asks.
Into a lab with machines, where things beep and hiss on all sides.
I gasp when I see the first table, on which a body’s hooked up to what seems like hundreds of hoses. At first I think it’s Tommy, but a closer look shows another male, strapped down. He’s asleep—or in a coma, rather—with the loudest machine in the room breathing for him. Another spits out readings while it pumps the lifeblood into and out of him.
“Who is he?” I ask.
Chalberg sighs. “He was supposed to be, well, like you, Liza.”
I frown at him. “And?”
“He’s going the way of the others now, like his brain can’t handle the overload.
Not sure how to explain it, but our bodies are so finite, and the perfect Special has infinite possibility, knowledge, and power.”
A small amount of excitement creeps into his face when he gazes at me, like he’d do anything to put me there on that table, and I cringe.
“It’s nothing like that,” I say “I can’t do anything close to what the Specials here can.”
While this poor man’s wasting away, Chalberg still looks ready to try again.
Baby approaches another door on the far side of the room.
“Don’t!” Chalberg lunges, but it’s too late. She’s already pulled it open. It whooshes as if it’d been air-locked. A blue glow emits through, painting everything in its haze.
“My God!” she says, leaving us behind.
We follow her into a room that’s bare, except for a contraption that’s set perfectly in the center. One circle of metal offsets another, and if they turn at once, together they’d make a sphere. It seems at least ten feet high, the sides are bolted down, and a loud humming makes me shout at Baby, who’s gazing at it in recognition. “What is it?”
“It’s Chronos,” she calls back. “It’s real!” she exclaims at the same time Chalberg yells, “We can’t be in here!”
Colors change against Baby, who’s bright pale, and in the glow of the machine, she’s blue. Both her hair and mine rise on end from some magnetic field. As she approaches Chronos, her arms stretches out, fingers reaching for the metal.
“No!” Chalberg calls, yet he’s too afraid to approach. Baby already has a hand pressed to one of the circles.
She turns to face me. “How does it work?” she wonders.
An inscription has been etched onto the side of one of the metal circles. I’ve seen this writing before, on Spirit; the inscription’s the same, in Latin. Frowning, Baby puts a finger to the markings, so I translate for her. “The doorway beyond the veil.”
The machine turns off. All but a small light remains, and a voice interrupts the quiet. “Very good, Liza.”
Simon’s at the door, hand at the switch. “Most people have mistranslated that last word. It is the pathway beyond, between what happens after, amongst other things.”
“To Heaven?” Baby says, sounding hopeful, and Simon chuckles.
He comes closer. “You could say that. Heaven and Hell, while a reasonable attempt to describe things beyond, are only placeholders. There may be some truth to them, but this … is indescribable. Unless you’re there, in what lies next, you cannot comprehend it, and neither can they comprehend this life, either. Describing limitations to the limitless is as difficult as explaining to you what endless places exist inside this machine.”
Simon gazes at Chronos as if she’s a lover.
Baby seems afraid to ask, but it’s like she’s compelled. “My sister. Her name was Sarah. I’ve been told she went in. Is that true?”
“Yes. Sarah went in, Kendra,” Simon replies, and then grins. “Why do you look surprised? I recognized you right away. She looked just like you, and was just as stubborn.”
“Can she return?”
“Most cannot after a time, but I’d give you leave to try to find her.”
Trying to stop her is on the tip of my tongue, but who I am to judge? If Baby, all this time, had a missing sister, then she’d had her own goals beyond ours. No wonder she’d jumped at the chance to help Thomas. She’d held out a wild hope that her sister was simply missing, not gone.
Baby bites her lip, her gaze on the machine. She looks back at Simon, hoping, but afraid to hope.
Simon flips the switch at the wall, before approaching. Spinning one of the circles, he nods at Baby, who grabs her side and pulls.
The two sides pick up speed, until they create a perfect sphere.
A blinding light grows in the center; small at first, then larger, spanning the full circumference.
I’d yell for Baby to stop, if I thought anything could be heard over the rushing wind, but she’s already creeping toward the light.
Then, it’s as if a hurricane lands in the room, and everything happens too fast to see. Baby’s gone, and I’m flinching back from a flare of light.
The machine quiets, and my eyes adjust. Baby’s lying on the ground, her body at odd angles.
How much time has passed? I feel stiff, as if we’ve watched the machine for days.
“What did you do to her?” I demand, rushing to her side.
Baby’s neck is at an impossible angle, and her eyes gaze at nothing.
“She chose her path,” Simon answers. “Something over there must have done this. She came back the wrong way rather than face it, or faced it and was destroyed. What happens to your body there, follows you here.”
I wipe tears away. “She wasn’t a Special, is that it? You need to be a Special to make it to the other side? You had to know that.” I stand, fists clenched. “That’s why you made them, isn’t it? Because then they could go through and not be torn to bits.”
“Liza,” says Simon, “I’ve tried a million ways to make it so the passage is useful to someone other than myself, and this has been the result every time.”
“Then why did you let her go!”
Military police flood the room, probably from hearing my rage.
They grab onto me, tie my hands.
Chalberg hovers over Baby’s body. “You won’t kill her, right?”
When Simon doesn’t answer, Chalberg rushes toward me. “You can’t! Simon, you don’t know….” His eyes go wild when he sees Simon’s made up his mind. “She’s Eve,” he blurts out. “Check her arm. She’s Eve. He sent her…”
I choke on my words, half-trying to curse the doctor, and half-trying to deny what he’s saying. “Why?” I finally ask, but then I see. His project lies dead on the table. He can’t make one like me, and he knows this.
If Simon executes me, then he’d no longer have his toy.
I glare at Chalberg as they take off my bandage to reveal the letters E V E. Simon traces the marks on my arm with amazement.
“It can’t be,” he says.
Simon’s gaze turns gentle. He watches me, just as he had Chronos.
He motions to Bradford. “Take her to a cell. And Chalberg, make sure she doesn’t hurt herself.”
Before we arrive, Chalberg injects me in the neck.
“Traitor,” I whisper as the drugs begin to work.
I slump against Bradford, who holds my weight, while Chalberg’s eyes come into focus before blackness takes me.
“I’m sorry,” he says, truly sounding like he is indeed.
Chapter Ninety
Liza
I wake up in a glass room. Lethargy holds me long minutes before I can sit up, and when I do, I hear a voice that makes everything better.
“Hey there, sleeping beauty.”
“Tommy!” I slur, trying to stand.
Tommy sits in the cell next door to mine. “That’s some good stuff they gave you,” he says, a weary edge to his voice.
“Tommy,” I murmur again, my words already wet with emotion. “Baby—she…”
He nods with a painful swallow, and his eyes darken before he looks away.
“What will they do?” Tommy knows I mean with him.
“Firing squad. First light.”
My knees fail me, and I have to sit down again. “No …” I moan. “He can’t.” But he gives me a half-smile that assures me that Simon can and will.
“How long?”
“Not very. At least you’ll be okay, now. Simon won’t risk his Eve. You’ll be safe.”
A lie, but it’s a nice lie. Alive, yes. Safe, no.
Even deep within this concrete building, I can feel the coolness of night already fleeing.
I have so many things to say. Instead, I sit on the bed, and in his last moments, we share the quiet. I look deep into his remorseful eyes, and I shake my head. Don’t be sorry. Not for me.
I will him to see how none of that’s needed, we don’t have time for regret right
now.
Tears come, though I swiftly whisk them away, trying to remain strong.
Tommy breaks our silence, chin tucked into his chest, hands out in front of him. “Sometimes,” he says, “I like to pretend that my hands are clean. But they aren’t, Liza. I’ve hurt so many people with the choices that have brought me here.”
I hold my breath, feeling him trying to continue.
“But I have loved. My father, my mother, my sisters. Daisy, Joelle… you.” He doesn’t look up, but rushes onward. “It’s not just a romantic love you can have for a person.” Tommy waves a hand in embarrassment.
I feebly rise to my feet and walk over to the glass.
Tommy comes forward, too, breathing loud, sad sounds.
Together, we lay our hands on the coldness.
Unable to avoid the looming approach of his own time, Tommy turns his head to gaze at the door. The fear etched across his face as he tries to see his own future undoes me. I cannot bear it.
“Tommy,” I say, fighting for my voice to return. Emotion pulls me into a tense thing of breakable quality while I search his eyes. “You stupid-stupid boy. What will I do without you?”
“How?” he says, his bravado fleeing. “What if I can’t?”
What if he can’t die? Or can’t face his own death? I don’t know which thing he means, but as he turns again to look at the door, body shuddering, wondering how much time he has, I hit the glass and say, “Don't look into the abyss. Look at me. I'm here. Until the end. Even in the end, please, look at me.”
He finds me again, and anchors himself there.
We lock eyes, and I pass him as much strength as I can muster.
Tommy stands taller with that familiar smile, though his eyes don’t quite absorb any of it.
If there’s a love greater than romance, it’s a brother-sisterhood born out of shared desperation, separated by violence. This is a love that forges iron, changes worlds.