The Journeyman

  He looked around June’s office. Its walls were bare, but he was quite certain that if she kept it long enough, they’d soon sport motivational posters and a calendar featuring monthly photos of chicks and other baby beasts paired with adorable captions. He would see the situation ameliorated long before that.

  “Someone from that bus is attracting a great deal of Essence and wreaking havoc on our efficiency quotients,” he said. “It’s showing up in every measure we use, and Mister Brill is not pleased because it places him in a situation more precarious than he would prefer. We have everyone from that drop zone in hand except the boy, and we’ll have him soon enough. Meanwhile, Annie Brucker is our best hope for smoothing out these little waves. You, in turn, are our best hope for controlling her.”

  He stood and grabbed the edge of June’s desk with both hands, tipping it up and letting it fall with a bang. The vase toppled over, spilling water across an open ledger before rolling off the desk and hitting the floor with a wet crash.

  “One more matter for you to understand,” he said. “If I go to The Fen, you’ll be devoured by that warehouse long before I get there. Yet that’s not the chief reason for ensuring that the Brucker woman succeeds in restoring our influence. Whatever Mister Brill does with us, we’d both better pray he retains his power. Because while we’re not technically on a Journey to decide our fate, The Commons remains a place of judgment. We’re the bad guys. Do you really think that’s gone unnoticed?”

  He shook a sliver of vase from the toe of his shoe. Then he left, closing the door behind him, leaving June Medill to spend some time alone with her new understanding.

  17

  Everybody Would If They Could

  The mummy’s name was Ken, and the monk’s was Po. They sat with Paul, Porter, and Rain on the benches of two moss-covered picnic tables in a cookout area that was down a side road from the main freeway, hidden behind a grove of elm trees. After the breakfast brawl and the standoff with the deputy, Porter was careful about the visibility of their stops.

  Paul told Porter he trusted Ken and Po with the truth, so the Envoy went with his Journeyman’s choice. The two of them wanted in.

  “You should know what you’re signing up for,” Porter said. “Helping us could win you some powerful enemies.”

  Po signed, and Ken interpreted. “Mine is the warrior’s option,” the mummy said for the monk. “I do not choose my battle. It chooses me.”

  “And you?”

  “Po and I speak as one on this. His decision is mine.”

  The monk signed again. “Brill is foe to all,” Ken said, adding, “My sentiments as well. Your Journey is ours, Paul.”

  “Miss Rain?” said Porter.

  “I’m easy.” She’d disassembled her shotgun and was nearly finished with its cleaning.

  “This will not be.”

  She shrugged and began to reassemble the weapon with remarkable speed and efficiency.

  “Why did those guys attack you?” Paul asked the mummy.

  Rain snapped the last pieces into place and looked at Paul as if she’d just reviewed the nominees for Stupid Question of the Year and named him the winner.

  “What? They called Po a scrap,” he said. “What does that mean?”

  Po signed, but Ken looked to Porter for clearance. Everyone sought the Envoy’s permission before telling Paul anything. It got on his nerves.

  “Hate has made a home in The Commons, as it has in all realms, Paul,” Ken said. “Here, those from your world are seen as real, so they are called bona fides. Those born of imagination and left behind by their creators are referred to as scraps by some. We prefer to be called mythicals.”

  Rain pulled out a red-and-gold box of candy with the word “Gifu” in black on its label, offering one to Paul.

  He ignored her.

  She shook the box at him. “They’re licorice.”

  He hated licorice, but she was trying to stop him from crossing some unseen line in asking too much about bona fides and mythicals. Clearly, it was a sensitive topic. The transition from boy to man, Pop Mike once told him, was recognizing that when a woman is trying to shut you up, you should consider it. Strongly.

  “The Akashic Field, Paul.” Now Porter was attempting a rescue, too. “Some people believe that the Akashic Field is everywhere—that it’s a sort of hard drive for everything that’s ever been, which might explain how the mythicals can exist apart from their creators. That wasn’t always the case, but it is now. And the word ‘scrap’ is a pejorative. Don’t use it.”

  “If it wasn’t always that way, why did it change? Why are so many still around?”

  Paul had hit upon something. Porter hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  That did it. “What do you mean? Isn’t it your job to know?”

  “Paul,” said Rain.

  “No. You don’t get it. I’m fine on my own. But somebody’s always telling me where to live, how to live. Now my life might be over, and they still are. Your credit card doesn’t work. You don’t know why stuff is the way it is. Why should I listen to you about anything?”

  “Because I know more than you do, and we can only hope it’s enough.”

  “What if it’s not?”

  “Then Brill will take you as he’s taken nearly everyone else—and the rest of us will be disposed of.”

  The stark candor of that curbed Paul’s ire.

  “The Commons is broken,” Porter said. “More accurately, its purpose—to judge and determine whether its charges move backward or forward, and where they go if it’s the latter—is no longer operative. Brill must hold and control what he’s captured, and he is always adding to it. Always. So he gets stronger, but the Essence that gives him his strength grows more difficult to monitor and contain. While he concentrates on that, the situation out here is chaos.”

  Paul picked up a stick and began to break it into pieces. In New York, if he fought with Pop Mike or anyone else in the New Beginnings leadership, the worst that might happen was a loss of privileges. In The Commons, he didn’t know the rules. And Porter was admitting that he didn’t, either. He used to, but not now.

  “For far too long, I did nothing but sit in my office and wait,” Porter said as Paul reduced the stick to bits. “The Commons changed during my last Journeys. While I idled, it warped further. I was surprised when my card didn’t work, true. And I will not pretend to know how bad it is out here.”

  “Bad,” Ken said. “The bona fides who have managed to escape Brill remain free only because it’s more profitable for him to acquire Essence at the drop zones. That is where people are at their weakest, and it’s easier to harvest them there than it is to hunt down those who elude him. But because there are no more Journeys, the escapees have nowhere to go. It’s only a matter of time before his attention turns to them.”

  “What about the mythicals?” Paul asked.

  “The Essence of a mythical is not as convenient for Brill to claim, but it’s there should he decide to do so.”

  “He will,” Rain said. “He wants it all.”

  The pieces of the stick were too small for Paul to break anymore. He threw them against the ground to see if they would bounce. They did, but not the way he wanted. They ricocheted off the dirt at unpredictable angles, refusing to attain any height. “Why? Why keep taking when he can’t even handle what he already has?”

  “Because if he doesn’t, and the system returns to working the way it should, he’ll be judged. So he must ensure that such a judgment never happens,” Porter said. “Once he started, he committed to seeing it through.”

  “It’s no longer about the power or what he can do with it,” said Ken. “His interest in that part probably stopped long ago. The only way he can justify his own choices now is to insist that anyone else would conduct themselves as he has, given the opportunity—but he is in this position because he is more strategic and more capable than they are.”

  “The bad guys never think they’re bad,” Porter said. “Or
that they’re worse than anyone else, at least.”

  “So Miss Gower had it wrong,” Rain said, wiping her gun down.

  Porter raised an eyebrow.

  “My second-grade teacher. She told us people like Brill don’t think about what would happen if everybody did that. But he assumes everybody would if they could. So he has to beat them to it.”

  That earned her a dark laugh from Porter.

  “What if I’m not the one he’s after?” Paul said. “What if it was someone else on the bus, and we keep sneaking around, and I never find out what my Journey’s supposed to be?” Po watched him. Paul recalled how the monk acted after touching his shoulder.

  “Paul,” Porter began. He stopped when Po looked up at the sky.

  They all heard it—a rhythmic thrumming. The whoosh-roar of something coming fast. Then a vehicle-sized blossom of orange flame nearby.

  The explosion knocked Paul to the ground. He struggled to his feet, but staying upright took effort. A high ringing in his ears, a brutal hearing test, blocked all other sound. To his right, a chassis and four wheels were all that remained of the van, and those were on fire.

  Black-clad Ravagers streamed through the trees. Paul tried to yell to Rain, who picked herself up off the ground, to ask if she was all right. But he couldn’t hear his own words. He hurried to her.

  The Ravagers closed in. The chopper that destroyed the van drew nearer. Paul could see its moving blades, but all he heard was his ears’ whining complaint.

  He was no combat expert—but he knew a lopsided fight when he saw one. The helicopter dropped to the ground fifty yards away. His hearing began to return.

  Rain pumped her shotgun. It wouldn’t be any good against the Ravagers until they got in close.

  A soldier took aim at Ken and fired several rounds into the big mummy, who winced with the impact but held his ground.

  Porter held his staff out, as if in surrender. Po stood by, fists at his sides, assessing.

  The Envoy flicked his staff, and the soldiers’ rifles were gone. That was all the monk needed. As one of the Ravagers reached for his sidearm, only to find his holster empty, Po leapt and delivered a kick to the man’s face that snapped his head sideways. The Ravager hit the dirt and moved no more.

  Two others rushed the monk, one with a truncheon, the other with a combat knife. The first got a forearm to the face-plate for his troubles, while his partner caught an elbow to the mid-section, below his body armor. Po twisted the second soldier’s arm, breaking his shoulder, then threw him for a loop onto his back.

  Two troopers went for Ken. The mummy grabbed each by the back of the vest and lifted them into the air. He smashed them into each other, face to face, like human cymbals. Again. Again. He dropped them. They stayed dropped.

  The numbers worked against them. More Ravagers climbed out of the chopper, one drawing a bead on Po. Porter whirled his stick, and the new arrivals were disarmed. But the effort cost the Envoy, who caught himself with his staff as his legs failed him.

  Another Ravager took aim at Porter. Rain shot him. His visor shattered, and he fell, clutching his face.

  Paul was out of his league compared to both enemy and friend. He felt ill.

  Rain caught the attention of the helicopter’s door gunner, who swiveled around toward her. Paul looked to Ken and Po for help, but they were fully engaged in their own fights.

  Porter struggled to raise his staff as Rain fired at the door gunner. A pellet load, useless at a distance. She pumped another into the chamber and fired again. It was the wrong ammo for the job.

  The gunner sighted in. She was going to die.

  Paul’s nausea became a full-on panic that churned its way up and out. He tried to shout but couldn’t form words.

  It was as if it was happening to other people, the situation registering from all points-of-view. Through Rain’s eyes, Paul was nearly overcome by terror. He knew Porter’s fatigue, Po’s rage, and Ken’s resigned approach to the violence. He even picked up on the cold aim of the door gunner and the other Ravagers, but those inputs were distant, veiled.

  He heard his own cry as something drawn from all of them there, louder than the whir of the Black Hawk. It came through him.

  A tree shot up out of the ground, under the chopper, where none had been before. It pierced the machine’s belly as it grew, eviscerating it, tearing it apart in a gout of fire.

  That, too, felt like it came through Paul—not there one second, destroying the chopper and towering over them the next.

  The helicopter went from fearsome weapon to a cascade of burning steel, blades whining off in all directions. The wheels, guns, and other pieces plummeted through the branches, leaves rasping against them before they thudded to the ground.

  The tree swayed. What remained of the chopper carcass rocked near its top, speared by branches. Paul gaped up at it, as did Rain. Ken and Po glanced around them for their enemies, who were no longer there. Then they, too, looked up.

  “My God, boy,” Porter said, still leaning on his staff. “My God.”

  All of the Ravagers were gone. A wheel fell out of the tree and bounced off the turf in front of them. It landed on its side and settled down in a floppy spin, a penny on a table. That was followed by a segment of rotor blade, which pierced the dirt and stood straight up—a flag marking the site of a miracle.

  “What have you done?” said Porter.

  The Envoy, Rain, Ken, and Po all turned to see Paul anew.

  Paul had no answer.

  18

  Mercy Triumphs Over Judgment

  To a wounded vet, painkillers were the perfect illustration of a negative-feedback loop. Forget thermostats or anything high-school science teachers had to say about the concept. Good ol’ agony was the best instructor.

  You took your meds until the hurting subsided. You stopped. When the nerves caught fire again, back to it.

  Sigh, cry, repeat.

  That was the way it was supposed to work, anyway. Annie’s job complicated things. When the knee hurt, the pinkies dosage rose. That meant less pain, but more fog, which slowed her down at the office. And poor numbers got the attention of June Medill.

  Annie had expected a cut in medication and an increase in misery for productivity’s sake, but June had surprised her. She’d doubled the dose.

  After that, the pinkies had surprised her. They’d stopped working.

  Now Annie was sure her negative feedback had gone positive on her, which was not good. The more pinkies she downed, the more her knee throbbed. And while that made it harder to concentrate, there was no denying she was able to work faster. Her pal the nautilus and those little bastards in the school of fish responded more quickly, provided clearer answers.

  More disturbing were the dreams and her memories of them. Before, no matter how difficult her life—from physical therapy to being the single mother of a special-needs son and trying to make do on one income—she’d never doubted herself.

  That had changed.

  With the pain and clarity came the feeling that her dreams of the New York apartment were not just the bedtime wanderings of her imagination. Perception had tipped up into a handstand. Now the dreams were what she desired, her current reality the nightmare.

  And Zach, who she’d hardly thought of all this time. She recalled feeding him and putting him to bed, but not talking to him or spending any real time with him. The clearest picture she had of him was from this morning—at the mirror, hand raised.

  Why? And why hadn’t she cared before now? Those were questions for when she got home.

  There was another to be answered first.

  “Are you cutting my meds so I work faster?”

  Annie stood in the doorway to June Medill’s office. She expected a sizable helping of umbrage for her insubordination, but the squat little woman merely looked her up and down.

  “Shut the door.”

  Annie did.

  “Sit.”

  Annie did that, too, as curious no
w about June’s lack of anger as she was about the pinkies’ weakness.

  “I can’t answer your questions directly because that will expose me.”

  This was not going the way Annie had expected. It was almost enough to make her forget about why she’d come in the first place.

  “You must hurry. There isn’t time,” June said. “Everything is moving. I didn’t realize that until I started digging. But you’re not asking the right questions.”

  “Did you order lower-dosage pills of my medication?”

  June looked down at Annie’s knee. “How does a lower level of medication make you feel? Sharper?”

  “So that’s a yes?”

  “Did I tell you I have a degree in information science? Or that the point of information science is formulating the right query? Have I mentioned that at first, I thought that was why I was chosen for this job, but then I realized it was because of my proximity to you? My adjacency?”

  Annie settled back in her chair to consider how to proceed. She knew June was giving her an opening, but didn’t understand quite what it was—or why.

  “Shouldn’t you ask more questions?” June said. “Did you know that this trick of trying to give you information in question form won’t work for long, if it’s working at all—that they’ll still figure out that I’m helping you? Do you agree that my plan for taking you somewhere outside to talk wouldn’t have worked, and that I’m compromised already, so we might as well just talk right here?”

  Annie understood. But she still wasn’t sure what she needed to know first, much less how to ask in a way that June could answer.