The Journeyman

  With that, the coffin was empty. Mr. Brill stood behind Rain now, neck healed, his hands on her—and on her with familiarity.

  She didn’t move to stop him. Her eyes searched Paul’s, but she allowed Mr. Brill to touch her and gave up trying to speak.

  “Paul Reid,” said Mr. Brill. “Meet Rain. I don’t believe you know her. I don’t believe you know her at all.”

  The little farmer pointed to 1300 hours. Zach made the leap to the safe rock with ease.

  Annie relaxed the tiniest little bit. He was one jump away from the stone with the door on it.

  This far in, the game was almost too simple. The only remaining time in the sequence that could be expressed on a twenty-four–hour clock was 2100, which was the nine under current circumstances. Zach was once again surrounded by stones, but one of them was the rock with the door. It was at nine o’clock—right in front of him.

  Why did she assume it would remain that simple?

  It didn’t.

  The stones around Zach’s disappeared, including the one with the door.

  Annie cried out as if she’d been struck. Wrangler John put a hand on her shoulder. She pulled away from him. Hard.

  All of the rocks were gone. All of them.

  Now there were only mosasaurs in the water with her son and the stone under him. Huge, cold, voracious monsters.

  Hic sunt dracones.

  She felt them—not physically, but as a bond with something you wanted to run from. She’d heard the term “lizard brain” many a time, but she’d never understood it until now.

  They didn’t focus on Zach. They didn’t have to. They knew where he was. And he was within reach.

  They didn’t even think of one another. Not as competition. They were one, all part of Mr. Brill. When Zach hit the water, they’d feed as a single entity.

  And the largest one. Trapped on the bottom, shifting hues. It had been the color of a tangerine, but it was changing again.

  It darkened to the color of blood-orange flesh. And it remained directly beneath the stone Zach perched on.

  The other mosasaurs paid little attention to her son.

  The big one thought of nothing but.

  The second hand sped along. Zach, true to form, betrayed no emotion as he watched the little farmer for a sign. But there was none to give.

  The stones were gone. The game was over. The hand would finish its trip. Zach’s stone would sink.

  It was only when there was once again almost no time left that Annie came up with a final desperate move.

  “Nine!” she shouted, and immediately wished she hadn’t. The last thing Zach would see as his stone sank was the little farmer pointing to the open sea.

  Dutiful to the end, the little man spun. And pointed.

  Annie had to push Wrangler John’s hand away again.

  Stupid. So stupid. Nobody had said the rock would sink. What if it didn’t? What if it was a safe haven after all, and Zach left it because of her?

  The farmer pointed at the door icon, though now there was no door there.

  That way was nothing. That way was monsters.

  Her son looked out on the empty water. He turned the toy to and fro. The little man rolled with the motion—consistent, turning and shifting to point in the chosen direction.

  The second hand reached its zenith.

  Annie stopped breathing.

  The stone held steady.

  Hope bloomed anew. The rock would not sink. Zach would be fine.

  His expression changed. Annie knew that look.

  He took a step back. And launched himself.

  Over the water. Into the abyss.

  Zach skinned his knees landing on the rock, which appeared in time to keep him from the monsters. He also scraped his knuckles hanging onto the little farmer, his fingers grinding into the stone as he went down.

  The little farmer was valuable still. He trusted it, although that trust didn’t guarantee everything would work out. The spinning man was part of something bigger. He’d told himself that on the tape recorder before stepping into the mirror.

  Zach missed Zach’s mother. She was looking for him. He wanted to tell her he’d see her soon, but that would be a lie. They had to do what was needed first, all of them—Zach, Zach’s mother, the boy from the bus, and the boy’s friends, who Zach couldn’t see and didn’t know.

  What he did know was this: even all of them together weren’t enough to beat the man in the suit and the white-haired man from the spider room.

  They needed the help that was trying to reach them. Which was why Zach listened to the little farmer, Tape Recorder Zach, and the ladies, all of whom had to reach the people they wanted to help without the man in the suit and the white-haired man finding out.

  For that, they needed Zach.

  He stood and faced the egress, which was just a plain wooden door. A closed one.

  His jeans stuck to his scraped knees. Little flaps of skin hung from his fingers where the stone had dug into them, and there was sand under the flaps. His fingers were numb from hitting the rock, but they’d sting soon—and bleed. And other parts of him were sore from previous impact. This was a painful game.

  Zach waited for the red to seep out from the flaps. When it did, he carefully took the piece of paper with the words from the bus out of his pocket. It was wet and close to falling apart. He dabbed at the blood. It hurt, but he had to do it.

  The little farmer pointed to a picture on the dial that looked like a piece of candy in a wrapper with twisted ends. When Zach tilted the toy, the little man shifted, pointing to the spot on the rock where Zach’s fingers had mashed when he landed.

  Zach wasn’t happy with the little farmer. He’d tricked Zach. But the little man was showing him something important.

  There was a hole in the rock, and it was filled with the same sand that was stuck under Zach’s flaps. He’d knocked a bit away when he landed, revealing something shiny buried there. Had Zach not hit the way he did, he’d have missed the shiny thing.

  He scooped the sand away until a little eye peeked out at him. His marble. It had returned to him, and now he’d take it the rest of the way.

  Zach blotted a little more blood onto the crayon writing because he wanted to be sure. It soaked into the wet paper and spread in threads, like red lightning, like the tie-dyed shirts he and Zach’s mother made—the shirts with the circle signs with the triangles in them.

  The same circle signs from the uniform of the girl soldier who was gone because of the other monster: not one of the ones under the water, but one related to them—the dark one. Gone along with the crying lady and the big wrapped man.

  Zach couldn’t say for sure how he knew these things. Maybe he’d heard them talked about in the hiss of the tapes and only understood them now. Maybe they’d traveled to him across the water or through the spinning of the little farmer.

  The important thing was remembering to listen. Most people forgot that part.

  It was sad, what happened to the women and the big wrapped man. Zach would do this for them and for all of the others whose names he didn’t and couldn’t know.

  The piece of paper was starting to tear because of the water, so Zach had to be even more careful with it. He wrapped it around the marble and twisted its ends, just like in the drawing on the Farmer Says.

  Nothing happened. He twisted a little harder and hoped. The wet paper caught fire.

  Zach’s hand burned. He nearly dropped the marble, but his trust saw him through. He closed his hand around the heat and hung on tight.

  It hurt bad. Really bad.

  At last, the flames died. Zach opened his hand. Smoke rose from his palm in the sea breeze.

  The paper was gone. Its letters had been etched into the marble’s glass by the heat, carved there in small white capitals: UNUS PRO OMNIBUS. OMNES PRO UNO.

  The tape recorder hadn’t told Zach what would happen next, but he knew—and he wished someone else could do it for him. There was no one. He
faced the door.

  In his hand, the last of the smoke clung to the marble’s surface, as if painted on in clouds. When he didn’t look directly at the marble, when it was at the edge of his seeing, it was a tiny world of greens, blues, grays, and whites—a globe. When he looked straight at it again, it was only glass and letters.

  It was enough.

  A smart boy. A brave boy. Zach raised the marble, its white words facing the door, and rapped on the wood three times with it.

  A push came from deep down in the water—unseen but sensed like the other knowledge. There. It created its own current, free now.

  The door opened easily. On the other side was the rest of the rock.

  He stepped into the doorway. The little farmer, tucked under his arm, whirred around.

  Halfway through, the little man stopped on the picture of the dragon fish, which was now as red as the blood from Zach’s fingers. “Mosasaur.”

  The door and stone vanished. Zach stepped through into nothing. He fell forward, the water rushing up toward him, the little farmer tucked under his arm, the cat’s-eye marble clutched in his fist.

  The dragon fish hurtled up from deep down on the bottom, so much larger than the others, its mouth a cave. It, like the picture on the toy, was as red as blood.

  The monster swallowed him whole.

  42

  A Little Breeze, Like a Breath

  On Mr. Brill’s screens, a wall of vines, each as thick as a leg, stretched hundreds of feet into the air. Trapped in the growth, only their faces visible, were thousands of captives who slept with eyes open.

  Their slumber was dark and restless. Paul’s growing ability to tap in as much as he dared told him so. The victims were all too aware of what Mr. Brill was doing to them, but it came to them in dreams of incursion.

  Smaller vines invaded their skin, their mouths, their eyes. Wherever there was a way in, the plants found or made them, siphoning Essence.

  Charges, Mr. Brill called them—and one was missing. Her space was an open pocket in the vines—body-sized, a pillaged womb.

  “There’s always one who wants to live just a little more than the rest,” Mr. Brill said. “That whole I-couldn’t-care-less act is a lie. Just like she is. I heard her begging to serve without even listening for it. She was more desperate. She had the need. Just like you, Paul.” His hands moved on her. “A beautiful girl and a spider tattoo. A little obvious, but she caught me a fly.” And moved again. “Buzz, buzz.”

  Mr. Brill’s words bit deep, like hooks.

  “I tried to leave,” Rain told Paul. He wanted so badly to speak, but nothing would come. “Twice. Over the tunnel, I told you to choose. I thought you knew. I gave you a chance.”

  “Did you want to leave?” Paul said.

  “No. But I tried again when I knew I was the one who got Ken killed.”

  Mr. Brill shone with accomplishment. “That peeper-slug bruise? I have those scattered all throughout The Commons. That one attached when you got your new clothes. But it was a decoy. I knew the Envoy would find it, and he never thought to look for another. Her eyes? My eyes. Her ears? Mine.”

  “The Nightlights,” Paul said, ignoring Mr. Brill. “The motel.”

  “No.” Her eyes stayed on him. “The fires kept him out, and so did I at the motel, after Ken—”

  At the mummy’s name, her voice broke. She took a slow, shivering breath. “I love you.”

  “Love,” Mr. Brill said. “Nobody loves anyone, Paul. Learn that now. The question isn’t what she sells. It’s how much—and for how much.”

  She wheeled around, flipped her shotgun straight up under Mr. Brill’s chin, and pulled the trigger. It was so loud, so close, that Paul’s ears quit. So did several of the screens.

  Mr. Brill let out a runny bellow and fell backward, a scarlet mess from the necktie up. Paul nearly retched.

  By the time she fired again, his face was healed. Her shot transformed into water droplets bouncing from his chest like rain on a tarp. “Our deal?” he said.

  “Shot.”

  Her gun glowed red-hot, and she was forced to drop it. The floor of the space became water, and Rain and the fallen gun plunged beneath its surface.

  Paul and Mr. Brill remained standing atop it.

  “The Commons is mine,” Mr. Brill told Paul. “Until you know yourself, I’m stronger, and you need time to gain that knowledge.” The surface of the water hardened into glass, sealing Rain beneath. “Time she does not have.”

  She maintained her steely calm. Her palms pressed hard against the underside of the clear floor, their skin flat and white as she looked up at Paul.

  “Did you hear her take a breath?” Mr. Brill tapped his foot once, twice. “I didn’t.”

  Her eyes betrayed her. Fear.

  “Let her up,” Paul said.

  “Our deal’s over. You heard her. Now there’s room for one with you.”

  “Let her up.”

  The floor turned obsidian.

  “It’s easier if you don’t look,” Mr. Brill said.

  The thumping from beneath the black floor matched that of Paul’s heart, beat for beat.

  Wrangler John, hearing Annie’s scream, tried to pull her away from the Virtual Boy. She clawed at his hands, and her nails claimed skin. He let go.

  He was on her side and was only trying to help, but she’d apologize later. Her son had been taken from her.

  Again.

  The interruption pulled her from the water, returning her to the purple-on-black pixels of the reef. A moment later, she was sucked back in with a force that stole her breath.

  There, again, was the nautilus. The nautilus became the Humboldt, and the Humboldt reached into her mind once more—and none too gently. End-game approached. Her comfort would not be a consideration.

  Annie joined with the millions of squid and adjusted as fast as she could. Another data dump.

  She was a part of it. So was Zach. They all were, always had been. And they were in danger. At risk.

  The Essence was The Commons and its inhabitants. It was alive, and it wanted out. It hadn’t sat still all this time. It had fought Mr. Brill.

  When direct attacks failed, the captive Essence and that which wasn’t under Mr. Brill’s sway retreated to their corners to plan a way out. They became a network of roots that, with nothing but time, sought cracks in his infrastructure. Bit by furtive bit, they undermined his foundation.

  It had begun lifetimes before, in small moves passing beneath his notice—like a mammoth theme park with far-reaching tunnels and subterranean rooms for characters to travel in, unnoticed by the customer. What if the corporation lost track of the older passages, fell out of touch with its staff, grew too confident to detect rebellion in the forgotten reaches?

  Underground railroads literal and figurative. Discarded landscapes from the unfinished Journeys of Mr. Brill’s usurpation. The lowliest of the bona fides who were never captured and the mythicals whom Mr. Brill didn’t deign to consider setting the stage for his overthrow.

  The hopeless kept the faith.

  Annie with her inside connections. Zach with a mind that moved beyond the normal spectrum. Paul with an ability to rival Mr. Brill’s. He was one of the Thirty-Six: young, good-hearted, and—given the right help—just strong enough to overcome the gap in experience. Symbols and icons that might rule the day if put into motion without a hitch.

  No small feat, but it was all they had. One shot.

  Annie reached a place of calm. Her son had been taken by a creature of the rebellion, not of Mr. Brill. Solving the puzzle had allowed it to act.

  Zach had made it across a deadly landscape of traps lying in wait, the guidance of many seeing him through. They were all his Envoys, and he was where he needed to be.

  So was Annie.

  So was Paul.

  The hope of the hopeless.

  Zach woke up in the apartment with the mirrored doors. He was back where he started, in his bed.

  All for no
thing. Undone.

  The pain told him the truth. Scraped hands, something hard in his back. He dug beneath him for it—the etched marble.

  On the night table sat the Farmer Says.

  It had happened. It was happening still.

  He was sore. He hurt all over, and his clothes were torn and stiff. But he climbed out of bed, clutching the marble, and picked up the Farmer Says despite the hurting.

  All travel was a circle. It looped in on itself and took you, if not back to where you started, then close to it. It was up to you to continue.

  So he tested this apartment. He went to the closed bedroom door and put his hand on the knob. He would find Zach’s mother and ask her. She was near.

  He stepped out into the hall. When he closed the door behind him, it was a hall no longer.

  Zach stood on the beach of a huge blue lake. The door behind him was gone as soon as he let go of it, replaced by a wood-plank walkway that climbed up and over a dune. Beyond that was a forest.

  A woman sat in a chair at the water’s edge, facing the lake. She had red hair like Zach’s mother, but Zach could see only the back of her head.

  Squeezing the marble, he tried to decide what to do. He pulled the string of the Farmer Says. Nothing happened.

  “Hello, Zach,” the lady said.

  He walked down to her because there was no other choice, and because she knew his name. It took longer than it should have.

  Zach didn’t want to get too close to the water, but he had to approach the woman. As he drew nearer, his reluctance found its reason.

  There was something in the water. Many somethings. He didn’t know what they were, but they scared him.

  The woman had put the fear into him. She wanted to keep him safe.

  When Zach finally got to the woman, he walked around to her front, his back to the lake so that he wouldn’t have to see it. Her face was pretty, though something told him she’d had no face at all until he got close enough for her to need one. Yet her smile was friendly.

  Not kind. Friendly.

  “It’s wisest to not look,” she told him. “And less scary.”