Drowning was kind of a stop-the-presses thing.
The nautilus’s spinning slowed. Its circle began to reveal itself as something else.
The ocean bottom disappeared. She was somewhere in the reef’s middle and saw nothing in the depths until, strangely, a new seafloor rose rapidly toward her.
At first, it was a single moving layer. Soon it became a mass of shiny cones with eyes.
Squid.
Humboldt squid, which she’d never seen or heard of before. But she knew what they were called anyway. And that knowledge, newly discovered in her head, was not her own.
Someone touched her. She remembered that the someone’s name was Wrangler John. She wanted to ask him if his knack for communing with mustelids and leporids extended, perhaps, to befriending carnivorous cephalopods.
Once again, she had no idea where those details were coming from.
The squid swarmed—touching, identifying, maybe trying to see if she was edible. Then they were gone.
With a brush and a tickle, the water was empty.
Or not.
What started as a hunch became certainty. A sense of vague, mammoth shapes far down, far away.
Something else was in the water with her now. Bad. Huge. Many.
The giants were a danger to her. To the reef itself.
Someone was in trouble. Prey.
She allowed her awareness to wander too close to the monsters—to their ancient consciousness, their forever mouths and teeth, their hunger. As craven as it was to think so, she was relieved that they sought someone else, not her.
The nautilus was gone.
She’d thought of it as a mere magical familiar, her guide to the data. It was so much more. It was, as Wrangler John said, everyone.
Everything.
In its place was a stunning mandala of a peacock in shifting detail and shades. Its tail feathers formed a circle that filled the disk shape the nautilus had traced. The magnificent bird’s deep-seeking eyes were its center.
Eyes that saw into her. Through her. Beyond her.
Once again, she was in the presence of something that, if it wished, could pull her mind from her—reduce her to a husk, a cicada shell clinging to a tree in the muggy rattle of early August.
She couldn’t escape the eyes, and she couldn’t look at them. To attempt it was tantamount to facing a star gone nova.
There was no menace here, nothing like that of the vague giants. But it was too much. It would end her.
She stood before the eyes of the gods. “Please,” she whispered.
The scrutiny ceased. The tail feathers spread further. And the bird was gone.
It took Annie long seconds to process what was revealed: a honeycomb pattern, a close-up of a pinecone seen from above. A ghost of biology class, when teachers made her and her friends go gathering in the woods, bringing with them inevitable dirt, mites, and other assorted insect visitors.
The pinecone, too, faded.
Revelation.
If she could have screamed into the water, she would have. It all fit.
She understood. She knew what the threat was in the vast reaches and depths.
Sunk into the reef, revealed now, was a marred clock face. She’d bought one just like it—a time-teaching toy—at a flea market at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, where peacocks roamed the grounds. Its flaws had matched this one chip for chip, scratch for scratch.
The toy had never delivered the lessons she’d hoped it would.
But as the clock grew translucent—as images beneath became clearer—she understood.
The massive horrors in the water. Creatures felt but not seen.
They were Brill.
And she knew now who their prey was.
Zach jumped because he couldn’t stay on the sinking rock. With his eye on the far-off door—a way out, he hoped—he leapt for the rock between him and it. He held tight to the Farmer Says. Maybe it had more to tell him.
His takeoff carried him farther than he’d thought he could jump, but he didn’t think about that for long. As he was about to land, the rock vanished.
He went feet-first into the waves and plunged beneath them. His world became water, and the next mistakes came one after the other.
The first was opening his eyes, only to find that he could see perfectly. That was okay in the swimming pool where Zach and Zach’s mother would go in the summer so that he could practice holding his face under and blowing bubbles. It was not okay when it showed him one of the mosasaurs hurtling through the water at him—a black cave rimmed with teeth the size of knives, growing as it approached.
The next was inhaling water. His lungs fought back with bubbles that blocked the lizard-fish from his view—and reminded him that he didn’t know how to swim.
The little farmer saved him. The farmer and the pelicans.
Despite the fear and choking, Zach hung onto the toy. It pulled him upward. It shouldn’t have been able to, but things worked differently here.
As he rose, balls of white hit the water hard, shooting past him and down into the depths.
Zach got to the surface and coughed up water. He managed to hang onto the farmer, which kept him from sinking.
All around, pelicans dropped from the sky as fast as they could.
At first, he thought that they, too, were enemies trying to target him. But they pierced the waves a distance away—nowhere near him—and he saw what they were up to.
They didn’t come back up. Not one of them. They dive-bombed the mosasaur, and the water grew choppy and red as the monster fish, distracted by food so close by, thrashed about and devoured the birds.
The pelicans were sacrificing themselves for him.
Buoying himself with the farmer, Zach made for the only rock left—the one he should have chosen. The stone he’d stood on was gone, as were the others. With the mosasaur closest to him distracted, he had a chance.
He held the little farmer out in front of him and kicked, as he’d seen kids do at the pool. He made headway. But then there were no diving pelicans left, and the mosasaur was not far.
It was forever. He kicked furiously, water splashing about behind him. The rock grew closer—but not close enough.
The mosasaur did the rest of the work. It came for him, pushing a mass of water ahead.
The wave it created picked Zach up and carried him to the rock with speed—too much speed. Right before he smacked into the side of the stone, he turned his face and struck it with his ear and chest.
Zach nearly lost his grip on the farmer, but was able to toss it up onto the rock and grab at the stone’s side. His fingers, wet and soft, tore. It felt like they were being set aflame by the salt water.
He barely made it.
As he hauled himself up onto the rock, the scales of the mosasaur’s green back broke the surface just beyond the stone—in front of him now. The great creature breached and dove back into the waves, foam flying in a pageant of predator anger. Another wave washed across the rock as a second monster made its presence known.
“Mosasaur,” said the little farmer. Zach needed no reminding of what he faced. “Egress.”
The boulder with the door on it was closer now. Zach’s rock was ringed by new neighbors.
Already the subtle vibration had begun. His new safety wouldn’t last.
He had to choose again, and there were no pelicans left to save him in the next round. No more mistakes allowed.
“Mosasaur,” said the little farmer as one passed underneath, generating another swell. “Egress.”
Zach eyed the rock directly between him and the door. That had been the wrong choice last time, but he badly wanted to try that way again. It was the straight line.
His rock trembled, signaling its impending descent.
“Egress,” said the farmer.
The little man had saved his life. But Zach really wished he’d shut up.
37
This Is Where It Begins
“It’s ok
ay.”
Rain didn’t answer, but she gripped Paul’s hand hard. It wasn’t clear where her urgency came from—fear of their situation or the desire to lend him strength.
Beneath those possibilities lurked a third answer. And Paul put it aside.
Before they stepped onto the carpet, they set their packs down, planning to retrieve them on the way back out. The man who’d introduced himself as Truitt betrayed nothing with his expression, but Paul had the feeling he was amused that they assumed they’d return here.
Entering the huge tent, they found themselves in a long corridor darkened by thick canvas walls on either side. It was difficult to see those walls clearly in the gloom, but Paul felt the pressing weight of them.
Truitt walked ahead, his silhouette framed in a small square of light at the corridor’s end. “Your arrival’s been greatly anticipated,” he said without looking back at them.
Rain squeezed harder still.
Paul suspected that Truitt was speaking to him alone. It was all he could do not to ask about Jeanne, which was probably why Rain held his hand so tightly. She didn’t want him bolting again.
He wouldn’t do that for the same reason he wouldn’t ask Truitt where his mother had gone. It was too delicate—too precious. He didn’t want to risk destroying it or scaring it away.
Paul did not like Truitt. Nor did Rain. The way she looked at the man, and he at her, spoke of a familiarity and contempt Paul needed to understand.
Yet he didn’t want to. He’d shut those questions out all along—since her tattoo had caught the fly in the van, since she’d blasted Deck through the bathroom door.
Rain had layers. Everyone did. She just might have had more than most.
The light ahead promised knowledge. Jeanne, the Journey, and what his final challenge would be. Knowledge of Rain, whom he thought he might love. He knew so little about her. He knew so little about love.
But her hand was in his, and she held on. If this was not love, it was the closest he’d ever come. And it was enough.
Jeanne was ahead. He felt her near. And this dark, beautiful girl, in a dream he feared questioning lest he kill it, might even love him back.
So he followed the man he didn’t like. He prayed the man would lead him to his mother, that he would face Journey’s End bravely, that he would be a match for it.
And he said not a thing.
The light at the end of the corridor was a curtain of white. When Truitt entered it, the white grew too bright to look at. Framed in the glare, he was all shadow, no features.
“There are doors we are required to pass through,” Truitt said. “We are expected, and this is what is demanded of us. Much to do—”
He disappeared into the white. It sealed itself behind him, cutting off whatever he said next, dimming until it was more tolerable to look at.
Paul made for the light. Rain held on, trying to stop him. At the point where he would have had to pull her, the white brightening around him, she came along.
Her grip never let up.
They passed through into a shadowy but sumptuous hallway. Its walls were paneled in dark wood, from which sprang gas lamps with crystal globes that threw shifting patterns of fiery veins onto the ceiling. Their feet sank into thick carpet.
Paul was not impressed by money in principle, but presented with what it could buy, he was cowed just the same.
There was wealth here. Wealth and power.
At the end of the hallway stood two massive doors of old hardwood, darker than the wall panels. Such doors opened on places of import. In the flickering light of the gas lamps, figures carved into the door appeared to dance.
Truitt grasped one of a pair of filigreed knobs covered in whorls tarnished with age. Each was the size of a dinner plate. His hand was tiny against it, as Paul and Rain would be against whatever lay beyond.
The door opened too easily for its size, revealing a cozy living-room setting. Rather, it was the foyer entrance to one. They could see the room it led to in a tall antique mirror set at an angle across a marble floor.
Only one detail in the room reflected in the glass mattered to Paul. A wood-and-velvet couch faced away from the mirror. On it, her back to them, sat a red-haired woman attending to a steaming teapot.
Her.
“Don’t,” Rain said. “Let’s go back.”
Paul stepped into the foyer. Rain maintained her grip and crossed the threshold with him.
The door shut behind them, its mass venting a hiss of air from the room. Rain let go of his hand.
They’d been fooled.
The mirror was gone—and with it the room and the red-haired woman. Truitt was nowhere to be seen.
They now stood in a spacious office filled with floating screens that were all dark. In the center of it sat a large man behind an even larger desk.
His suit fit him perfectly. His smile did not.
Rain chambered a round.
Paul didn’t need that clue.
He knew the man.
38
Second Guess
Over the years, Annie had been called mother, data jockey, and soldier. That was the order of importance, and she’d never imagined it would ever be shuffled.
But her son now faced horrific danger, and there was only one way to see him through it. She had to be all three.
The mother needed to be controlled. If she lost her head, Zach died. So she’d use all of her training for how to remain rational under fire—her days of real bullets sent her way. The focus that had carried her from bed, to wheelchair, to crutches, to cane, to brace—and then, finally, to carrying her own weight.
The clock game’s familiarity meant a connection to Zach. The rocks around him matched the positions of the numbers. The images she saw through the clock face were distorted, but the data flow told her the rest—the data and the bond between mother and child.
In the first round, Zach had chosen the direct line to the door. That was most definitely wrong. However, she couldn’t determine the clock’s orientation, so she didn’t know what hour the correct choice represented. Where was twelve? Where was six?
The rules, as far as she had deduced from the flow of information, were these: when the second hand finished one revolution, his rock would lower him into the water with the killing giants if he was still on it.
Annie screened that part out. It profited nothing to allow it in.
Choosing the wrong rock did the same thing. But the correct rock restarted the clock, giving him another sixty seconds—and a whole new circle of options from which to choose. The point of the whole exercise was for him to reach the door—the way out.
All Annie had to do was pick the right rock and figure out how to communicate her choice to Zach. Then she had to do it again and again until he was free.
First things first. Make fast choices, and try to learn something each time. The second hand was nearly halfway around, and she had no clue which number to choose next.
Clue. The key part of the time-teaching game they’d played at home.
Three clues.
What hour did Zach jump to last round? She concentrated as hard as she could on silently asking the question.
Nothing.
She repeated it out loud.
“What?” said Wrangler John from far away.
Annie shushed him.
The clock game’s hour hand clicked to one o’clock, which wasn’t really much help in choosing the next one. She couldn’t assume that the stone closest to the door would always be twelve, even though it had been in the last round.
Why hadn’t she just asked which rock was the right choice? She’d wasted a clue.
“What was that?” Wrangler John said.
Annie waved her hand frantically in the water.
She must have done the same in the room she sat in because he shut up.
The second hand grew hideously close to completing its revolution. There was only time enough to shout a guess.
She w
ent with what had worked last time. “One o’clock!”
“What?” said Wrangler John.
The number one turned green on the clock face, indicating her choice.
It was a horrible joke. She saw no way for her son to get the message. How could he know how the clock face was oriented? How could he know it was a clock at all?
The most horrible part, of course, was that he was a boy of five.
He didn’t know how to tell time.
39
An Offer, An Answer
Mr. Brill had a talent shared by many a tough guy in the neighborhood around New Beginnings. He was completely at ease with silence.
He lorded that over Paul and Rain, reptilian smile on display while they awaited his words. He was a businessman, but Paul knew the street version of the game. Don’t speak if you don’t have to—few words, more power.
If Mr. Brill was concerned that he was unarmed while Rain held a loaded shotgun, he hid it well. He offered Paul a seat in front of his desk. There was only one, and thus no such offer for Rain.
Paul declined.
“This will be easier if you sit.” Mr. Brill’s voice was too loud after the peace of Gaia. “But it’ll be easy all the same—for you, for me, for The Commons. All I have to say is this: congratulations.”
Rain let her shotgun creep up, but a warning glance from Mr. Brill made her reconsider. She aimed it at the floor again.
Paul suspected that wouldn’t last long.
“For what?” Paul said when it was apparent that Mr. Brill wouldn’t speak again without a response.
“For completing your Journey—for acing your test. You knew that the Shade was my proxy.”
Paul nodded.
“And you know that the Journey ends with your challenge. What you don’t know is that the rules need not be so unforgiving, especially when I’ve changed them.” He drew the moment out. “You’ll ask how, but had your Envoy stayed current instead of sitting and rotting in his office, he could have told you. I am The Commons. The Commons is me, and so are its laws. Your challenge was to overcome my Shade—and through it, me.”
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