Chaos

by Lanie Bross

  “I am sorry,” Rhys said softly.

  Luc looked down, blinking back tears. He’d come hoping that Rhys would help him; he was the Radical who had once turned back time. There had to be a way. Luc hadn’t cried since Corinthe died. He wouldn’t start now. Anger replaced his sorrow. “Her death was supposed to put everything right again. That’s what she said. But just this morning, Executors attacked my sister. It was all supposed to stop. Why hasn’t it all stopped?” Luc’s voice cracked and he took a deep breath.

  “The Unseen Ones work in mysterious ways,” Rhys said, and Mags cawed in agreement.

  “Bullshit.” Luc was tired and desperate; he hadn’t expected Rhys to stand up for the Unseen Ones. “You know that’s bullshit. You warred against them once. You told me that you turned back time. Tell me how.”

  Rhys shook his head. “I may have misspoken that night. The drink, the celebration …”

  Despair welled up inside Luc, causing his chest to tighten like a vise. “No. You said time and space flowed like water. You said that love was eternal. Now you’re telling me it’s a lie?”

  Rhys sighed. “No, my boy, it’s not a lie.”

  “Then help me. Please.”

  “Even if I wanted to, I can’t. I’m not long for this world, or any other, for that matter.” And it was true; Rhys seemed to be shrinking in front of Luc’s eyes. “Remember, Luc. The path to righteousness goes straight through the heart.”

  “Riddles?” Luc was suffocating in the heat. He had crossed worlds to be here, and now Rhys was refusing to help. “I ask for an answer, and you give me riddles?”

  “Life and death are the greatest riddles we must solve, aren’t they?”

  “Goddamn it, Rhys.” Luc sank down on the edge of the bed and dropped his face into his hands. He had not thought about failure, because the thought of never seeing Corinthe again hurt too much. “No more riddles.”

  Now, Rhys, his last chance, was dying, and there was nothing else to do. Corinthe was lost to him forever. It had all been for nothing. She was wrong.

  Agony burned inside Luc. He lifted his head, stared down at his friend through watery vision. “She was my Other.…” He trailed off. “I just want her back.”

  The bed shifted as Rhys, wincing in pain, pushed himself up onto his elbow. Luc heard his labored breath and thought how unfair it all was. Everyone was leaving him.

  “What you want is not impossible.” Rhys’s voice was very soft. So soft that Luc thought he had misheard the man.

  “What?” Luc’s heart beat fast. He was afraid to breathe, in case Rhys would take it back.

  “Almost impossible, maybe,” Rhys said. His unseeing gaze drifted across the room as if he was remembering. A faint smile danced over his lips before his strength gave out and he sank back onto the bed.

  Luc leaned over Rhys, holding the man’s callused hand between his.

  “Almost impossible, I can work with,” Luc said desperately. Almost meant that there was a chance, however small.

  Rhys smiled again, back in the present moment. “You are so like me. You are the way I once was. A passionate idiot.” His smile faded. “There is only one person I know of who has the kind of power you need. But she might refuse to help you. Be prepared for disappointment.”

  “She?”

  “Her name is Tess, and she is a Radical, like me.” Rhys seemed about to say more, but then he shook his head and continued in a stronger voice: “She is strong-willed. There may be no swaying her to your side.”

  “What do I tell her?” Luc asked. “How can she help me?”

  “She’ll take you to the place—” Rhys wheezed, unable to finish his sentence. “She’ll take you where you need to go. The Figments can help you find her. They will lead you to her.” Rhys made a weak gesture with one hand; several Figments materialized from the flickering shadows in the cave.

  Luc was desperate to leave, but the sudden sickly pallor of Rhys’s skin made him hesitate. He couldn’t let Rhys die alone.

  As usual, it was as if the chemist could read his mind. “I told you. Time moves differently for everyone; but for everyone, time does run out. Such is the way of things. To die here, at home, is enough for me.”

  Emotion burned in Luc’s throat. This would be the last time he would see his friend.

  “My boy, don’t be sorry. Death is a part of life.” Rhys closed his eyes and for a wretched moment, Luc thought the man had died there next to him. But he opened his eyes once again. “You must go now. Time also does not stand still, waiting for us to act. Good luck, my boy. May you find what you seek.”

  “Thank you.” The words seemed pathetic and insufficient, but Luc didn’t know what else to say. “Thank you for everything. I will never forget you, I promise.” He swallowed. His last words to Rhys were so thick they stuck in his throat. “Goodbye, Rhys.”

  “Goodbye, my boy,” Rhys said, withdrawing his hand. He had a faint smile on his face, as if he could see something Luc couldn’t.

  When Luc and the Figments reached the mouth of the cave, the suns’ light was brutal. He stood for a second, blinking, dazed, filled with grief that felt like an animal clawing in his chest. If he quit now and went home, back to Jasmine, there was a chance the Unseen Ones would leave him alone.

  But he knew he couldn’t give up on Corinthe. Finding her was like coming home to warmth after a long, brutal night in the cold. Finding her was what he had been waiting for, without knowing he had been waiting for it. Without her, he was only half a person.

  He would never give up.

  Something his mom used to say, some AA quote, probably, came back to him as he stood there, hesitating.

  You can’t go back, Luc, you just have to keep going forward. One step at a time.

  The Figments had paused, too. They were waiting for him to decide.

  “Take me to Tess,” Luc said.

  The sand was halfway through the hourglass now. How long did Miranda have left?

  The members of the Tribunal had long since vanished. She was alone in Vita, at least for the moment.

  Could she find a way to free herself before they returned? If she could get out and find Ford, he would help her. Together they could take down the Tribunal. He must hate them as much as she did; he, too, had been imprisoned for treason.

  A thrill raced through her. She remembered how young they had once been, how powerful. She remembered how they had once made a vast sun go dark; she remembered the sudden cold, and planets dying, shriveling to dust, until they looked like the ruined, puckered surface of Humana’s moon.

  It had been intoxicating.

  But she knew that it was hopeless. She was weak now—too weak even to cast off her human form, assumed so long ago, when she had first tried to ensnare Corinthe in her plot to ruin the Unseen Ones. There was no chance of escape. Her powers were diminished here, eaten up by Vita’s vast hunger. It was part of her punishment, she knew.

  A fissure of steam began under her cell, and for a moment, Miranda wondered if the Tribunal had decided not to wait after all. If this was it, she would fight bitterly to the end. But it wasn’t a council member who appeared.

  It was Tess.

  “Come to gloat?” Miranda fought back the ache in her chest. She should have been beyond feelings now. Everyone had turned against her.

  Still, Tess had once been hers. Born from a star Miranda and Rhys had created. A child of their power.

  “I don’t have much time.” Tess gripped a small vial in her hand. Before Miranda could ask what she was doing, Tess opened it and overturned its contents.

  Immediately, there was a horrible sound from the pulsing walls, from the very membrane of her cage—as if Vita were screaming. The potion hissed and steamed, and as Miranda watched, it began to eat through the floors, through the twisting strands that enclosed her, creating wisps of black smoke.

  The air smelled like burning flesh, and the sound—the scream—continued to build.

  “You gave life to
me and I can’t let you die,” Tess said simply. “Now go, or the Tribunal will find you.”

  Miranda fought another wave of feeling. This was the difficulty of all the time she had spent in Humana. She had become too sensitive. Too prone to emotion. “I meant what I said, Tess. I will try to find a way to destroy the Unseen Ones.”

  “I know.” Tess took a step back. “I meant what I said as well. I will do everything in my power to stop you. I won’t have your blood on my hands. But we are still enemies.”

  The potion, which could only be the blood of a Blood Nymph, burrowed through the living tissue, eating holes in Vita’s flesh, creating a tunnel in its wake. As Miranda slipped inside, the screaming crested, becoming a high, constant howl, the frantic wail of a dying animal.

  The rib spires shook. The pulse of Vita quickened. This living world screamed in pain.

  “Go!” Tess shouted at her, and then she wasn’t Tess anymore, but light.

  Miranda wasted no time.

  She followed the poison to her freedom.

  All night, Luc followed the Figments across a landscape of rock and red sand, fighting back exhaustion, shivering in his jacket now that the suns had gone down. It was pitch-black—there was no moon in the Land of the Two Suns—and he had to follow the Figments by their whispers as they instructed him to turn left, go forward, watch your step.

  It wasn’t until dawn that the Figments stopped. They had stopped, seemingly, in the middle of a desert, with nothing but red sand for miles in any direction. Several dozen feet away Luc saw a small pool—a puddle really—of silvery water. At first he took it for a mirage, a shimmering trick of the suns. But as he approached, the liquid rose into the air, until he could see himself reflected in the surface like a huge mirror.

  He looked to the Figments, but they remained where they were. This was it. He was on his own again. Before he could change his mind, Luc took a deep breath and stepped through the mirror.

  Even though he had braced himself for it, the swirling winds and howling noise of the Crossroad knocked him off his feet, and he was falling, once again, into darkness.

  Stay calm. He gripped the archer in his hand. He thought the name: Tess, Tess, Tess.

  As abruptly as ever, the ground appeared. He landed on his feet, but the momentum of his fall propelled him forward, straight into a collapsed lamppost. He banged his shins against hard metal and tumbled to the broken pavement. His palms skidded across the ground, and he felt the bite of tiny pebbles in his skin.

  “Shit.” Only after he spoke out loud did Luc realize how quiet it was. His voice echoed faintly. He picked himself up, wincing, wiping his palms on his jeans. The archer had fallen from his grip and lay sideways in the dirt.

  For one dizzying second, he thought he’d somehow landed back in San Francisco after the earthquake. The blue sky, the wispy clouds, the high, round sun, and the lampposts and billboards—it looked like his world, but a world destroyed by some awful event. Piles of rubble, half-collapsed buildings, overturned cars coated with white dust—the destruction stretched as far as he could see.

  The impression that he was back on Earth passed quickly. The streets were wrong, and the buildings, too.

  And the people. There were no people. He felt it, as though the air itself were lonely.

  “Hello?” Luc called out. Nothing. Just a light breeze that sent dust skittering across the street.

  In front of him loomed a vast building with an ornately carved facade. Like everything else in this world, it was stained with age and seemed in danger of collapsing. The whole world felt abandoned. Why had the archer led him here?

  Tess. She must be here somewhere.

  Luc picked up the archer and tucked it back into his pocket. He climbed the splintered stone steps and pushed open a door hanging loosely on its hinges. Inside, it was very dark and smelled like mildew and old paper. He was in a long hallway; he kept his hands on the walls and felt plaster flake away beneath his fingers.

  The darkness lessened as he made his way down the hallway, which ended abruptly in a vast room, at least four stories high and as long as a city block. Several crumbling stone staircases spiraled up the walls like ancient serpents, and behind the coiling staircases were hundreds and hundreds of shelves with thousands and thousands of books. No wonder he’d smelled paper. Luc had never seen so many books in one place before. Not even the San Francisco Public Library came close.

  The place was abandoned. That was obvious. Portions of the ceiling had crumbled at some point, littering the floor with debris. Trees grew up from between long cracks in the floor, and the largest one, which stood in the middle of the room, stretched all the way to the open air. A weak stream of gray sunlight filtered into the room from the hole in the ceiling.

  Then Luc noticed ornate, heavy-looking candelabra lining the walls, their tiny flames dancing and winking at him. Who had lit them? Who kept them burning?

  Tess?

  “Hello?” Luc called out.

  This time, there was no echo, only a whispery sound, like pages of a book blowing in the breeze.

  “Is anyone here?”

  When no one answered, he moved cautiously around the room, peering into dark alcoves and stepping over toppled furniture thickly layered with dust. It looked like the place had been ransacked at some point long ago. Dust was heavy on the floor and muffled his footsteps.

  In one shadowed alcove, he noticed a brass plaque. It was coated with grime, and Luc used a corner of his shirt to wipe it clean.

  LIBRARY OF THE DEAD

  A chill went through him.

  What the hell?

  Stepping closer to the lowest shelves, he quickly saw that the books weren’t organized by any numerical system. Instead, categories were marked on small, rust-spotted placards at the top of each shelf.

  FORGOTTEN ORPHANS

  Luc pulled a thin brown book from the shelf and flipped the cover open.

  WILLIAM HENRY FERNIVUS

  17 MAY 1195–12 FEBRUARY 1200

  He felt sucked into the book by some invisible force and couldn’t look away. As he skimmed the pages, the heaviness, the ache that Luc had felt outside gripped him again. The pages of the book were brittle, and Luc wondered whether they had ever been touched. He worried that they might crumble into dust.

  A thin, sad book, for a thin, sad life.

  And then, as he reached the end of the book, he heard it: a sigh, a human sigh that came from the pages, from the spine.

  He let the book drop. He took a quick step backward, as if the book were a snake that might bite him. He hadn’t imagined it. He was sure. The book had sighed.

  He stooped, retrieved the book, and quickly shoved it back onto the shelf.

  He moved down the row. More names. More dates. In Scorned Rulers, Luc pulled out a book titled Napoléon Bonaparte 15 August 1769–5 May 1821. This book, too, had a mesmerizing quality. In it, he scanned the dictator’s early childhood, his military training in France, his exile to Elba. Then, his death while under British confinement.

  It was all of Napoléon’s life in the book, from birth to death. Not just his major historical accomplishments, but his secret longings also. His humiliations and disappointments. His shame. Things only the man himself could have known. It filled Luc with an eerie feeling, like he was prying into a version of the past he wasn’t meant to see, a version meant to be buried forever.

  He knew he should be looking for Tess. He knew that’s what had brought him to this world in the first place.

  But he had to see more.

  All around Luc were towers of books, each volume a person’s life. Library of the Dead. How had these records gotten here? A kind of magic that translated a person’s life into book form? He felt humbled, in awe of all the histories that surrounded him. Blood hammered in his ears as he climbed one of the rickety staircases to the second level, transfixed.

  CHANGED THE WORLD

  GREAT INVENTORS

  MISSING MOTHERS

&nbs
p; He almost skipped right past it before his mind registered what he’d found. Missing Mothers. The section was large—larger than it should have been. His finger was shaking as he moved it carefully along the spines, trying to decipher each faded name. There were more than a dozen Daphne Simmonses, and he had to pull down several books before he found the one he was looking for.

  Luc swallowed. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know any other version of his mother—of the woman who had tucked him into bed, had taught him about the stars and which constellations were the best for making wishes, and had let him and Jasmine eat brownies for dinner on their birthdays.

  He couldn’t not open it.

  She had been happy once. At least, he thought she’d been happy. The need to know for sure sent his fingers flying over the pages.

  The book was written in the first person, as though every thought, every breath, had found its way onto these pages. The pages were organized by date, and Luc looked up the day he was born and read about his mother’s joy, greater than she had ever thought possible. The day Jasmine was born, and how their mother had looked at her children and wanted to give them the world, the sky, and the stars.

  Luc took a shaky breath and closed his eyes. He already knew what happened next. It would always end the same way, no matter what corner of the universe he had found, what world he had stumbled into.

  Today I saw a little dark-haired girl that reminded me of Jasmine. I almost went up to her, but I couldn’t. I don’t deserve to.

  Luc didn’t just read the words; he heard them, a regretful exhale, like his mom was whispering to him from far away. He quickly thumbed ahead a few pages.

  I called today. Luc answered the phone but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. Hearing his voice made it hurt so bad. My babies. It’s too hard to think of them. Too hard to do much of anything lately.