by Dan Krokos
“But if we stop Nina, won’t the director just come and gather the eyeless herself?” Peter says.
“Yes,” Noble replies, “but it will buy us more time. The Torch was hidden here because the eyeless are here. If we can take it from Nina, we will control the monsters.”
Not something I want to sign up for.
“Do you know where it is?” Rhys asks.
Sophia laughs with her mouth full, like the very idea of knowing the Torch’s location is preposterous.
“If I did, I suspect this whole eyeless business wouldn’t be much of an issue,” Noble says.
Rhys stares into the fire, clearly embarrassed, and I realize I’m waiting for Noah to crack a joke.
“Then how do we find it?” Peter says.
Noble cups his hands and blows into them. “An ally inside the Verge sent me a message. It said, Tomorrow they ride at dawn for the Torch. And now so do we.”
I climb a few levels to the bathroom, where I’m hoping Noah will appear.
“You’re still worried,” he says behind me. I turn around. “That Nina is in your head.”
“How could you tell?” I regret the sarcasm as I say it.
He laughs and steps closer. “Your mind is like a hurricane. You try to shut your feelings out.”
I throw my hands up, and my throat tightens. “She kept me alive, Noah. She took me from the school lab and brought me to some basement, and she didn’t kill me.”
Noah doesn’t speak, just listens.
I was ignoring this part, but now I realize how important it is.
I shouldn’t have let Peter convince me to stay.
“And Sequel was able to overpower Nina for a minute, and I asked why, why did she let me live, and she said Nina wanted me for something. So what do you think that is?”
“She didn’t change you while you were in the Verge.”
I nod and swipe my fingers over my cheeks. “Yeah. That’s the only reason I haven’t run away.”
“And Peter is keeping you at a distance,” he says flatly.
“He has to lead,” I say.
Noah nods after a moment. “Yeah, he does. Is that who you want to be with? Because that isn’t going to change. Pete has always been a leader. Even if he wants you to come first, it goes against everything Tycast and Sifu Phil taught him.”
I can’t deny it. And I’m beginning to understand that our lives might always be this way. I just have to figure out if I can accept it.
“I don’t have to lead,” Noah says.
“You’re—” I stop. What was I going to say? You’re dead? No. I wouldn’t have said that, because he’s not dead. This is the first time I allow myself to consider the obvious—with a blank clone and the memory band, he could be here. For real.
“You’re right,” Noah says. “This is so easy for me too. I love being in here, watching as Peter does the things I used to do.” He touches my bottom lip with his thumb. “Those used to be my lips.”
“I’m not Sequel,” I say. Those were the last lips that belonged to him.
“I know that.”
“Just go away so I can pee.”
I feel him disappear again, but this time the hole he leaves is a little wider.
We sleep on the cold concrete next to the fire. I wrap myself in a blanket and shiver on the border, where one side of me is too cold, the other too hot. Peter throws his blanket over both of us and pulls me close against his chest. And it’s nice.
“Peter…” I say softly. I’m not even sure what I want to say. It’s clear he won’t be able to fully trust me until this is over.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been a good boyfriend,” he says.
“We’ve been busy,” I say, but it feels like an automatic response.
“Maybe we can talk about it when this is over.”
I don’t ask what that means for us in the present. Maybe I should just let him go, let him lead, and worry about what I’m going to do to keep Nina from taking over my mind and body. Easier said…
Our breathing is off at first—mine is too fast. Then he leans over and kisses me on the corner of my mouth. We don’t say a word, but after the kiss our breath syncs and I’m able to fall into a dark and empty sleep.
In the morning there is frost on the floor. The horses exhale long plumes of steam and walk back and forth on the hay. Noble has the fire stoked, and a pot of something oatmealish is bubbling in an honest-to-God cauldron. Sophia and Rhys show up with two new horses, both chestnut brown.
“Used the last of our savings in the market,” she says, walking them to the hay.
“We’ll get more,” Noble says, spooning slop into several bowls. “This’ll warm you a bit. Stretch if you can. We need to stay limber for the fighting ahead.”
Sophia and Rhys move to the workbench, where she redresses her wound. She won’t quite look at him. He keeps trying to put his hands in his pockets, but he’s wearing his armor, so it looks like he’s just rubbing his thighs weirdly. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s nervous around her.
We eat the tasteless stuff from the cauldron and pass water around. Rhys asks if there’s coffee, and Sophia cracks a smile. Even Peter chuckles.
One by one the others stop smiling and remember how dangerous this really is. Sophia shows us to a cabinet full of weapons. Some are in good shape, some not. She and Noble ditched the red gear in favor of something darker. They wear sleeveless charcoal vests and pants that look thick enough to be considered armor. An old gray and curdled scar winds down Noble’s left arm.
“I was able to recover your swords,” Noble says behind us as we appraise his meager collection. “But your revolvers and ammunition were added to the Red Guard armory. I’m afraid they’re lost.”
Rhys groans. He loves his gun more than he loves himself. We each take our swords and stick them on our backs. Peter picks a well-maintained shotgun, and Rhys chooses another, smaller sword. I grab the bow and quiver of arrows. The bow luckily has a metal grip, so it sticks to my back, too. The way I see it, the arrows are the only things guaranteed to fire. I don’t like to use guns I haven’t test-fired and cleaned myself. After we’ve chosen, Noble gives us wristband radios with little earpieces.
Outside, the sky is still black, but we can see. A light dusting of snow covers the ground, masking the ugliness of everything. Caramel coating on a rotten apple. We could almost be home right now.
Noble walks his horse in front of ours, looking at each of us in turn. “I can’t tell you what happens next. And I don’t need to tell you what happens if we fail. Strike hard and fast. The worlds are counting on us.”
As far as pep talks go, there have been worse.
Together we ride on the gray and white road, back toward the enemy.
I watch as Nina and Gane exit the Verge in my direction.
About five blocks from the Verge, Noble pulled us together to go over our positions. Sophia handed each of us a small steel medallion on a chain, powered by the batteries I picked up with her in the market. In the center of the disk is a red button. “Wear these ’round your necks. If an eyeless comes near you—say, ten feet—press the button. It’ll emit a blast of radio waves on every frequency. Enough to cause some interference with their psychic vision.”
Ten feet. So, basically, use it if you’re about to get eaten.
“Let me guess,” Rhys said, turning the medallion over in his fingers. “It won’t last long, or only has a few charges.”
“The batteries will last, but each radio burst will become less effective as they adapt. You can use it maybe once or twice.”
“Better than nothing,” Peter said, at the same time I was thinking it.
“That’s one or two charges total, for all of us,” Sophia added. “So call it out if you use one.”
It’s better than nothing, but barely.
Then we split up and picked our way through the streets to cover all the possible exits.
I’m north of the Verge. Rhys and Peter
watch from the south and east, respectively, while Noble and Sophia watch from the west, the most likely direction Nina and Gane would head. Instead of the Lincoln Tunnel from our world, Noble told us of a bridge in the same general area, the Lincoln Bridge.
From the shadows inside the Verge’s north tunnel, Nina and Gane ride out on two horses. My heart starts to pound. The street used to be Broadway, according to a sign I passed on the way here.
I lift my wrist to my lips and whisper, “I see them. They’re moving slowly. What do you want me to do?”
“What direction are they heading?” Noble says in my earpiece.
“Straight north. Straight for me.”
Noble sighs. “Okay, they could still turn west for the bridge. Can you move?”
I’m hiding in the doorway of a hollowed-out drugstore. Axela stands quietly just behind me. There’s no way to exit without crossing their field of vision; the rear doors are rusted shut.
“Can’t make it,” I say to my wrist.
Sophia chimes in with, “There’s no logical reason for them to go that way.”
“Well, they are.”
“Hole up,” Peter says. “We’re behind them.”
My chest tightens. Even with the others in pursuit, Nina and Gane will pass very close to me. I poke my head out the door again and see they’re only a short block away. Axela snorts and takes a step backward. I cross the room to her, into deeper shadow. It was stupid to corner myself like this.
“Quiet, girl,” I whisper to Axela, stroking her mane and scratching under her chin. Her eye gleams in the darkness, and her nostrils flare. “Don’t move.”
Eight hooves clop on the road outside. My eyes stay on the open doorway for another ten seconds until Gane and Nina come into view, just forty feet away.
They stop outside the doorway.
I hold my breath.
“Do you feel that?” Gane says. He’s wearing the same gear as yesterday, but with a long black riding cloak that flows over his horse. Axela sighs through her nose, stirring my hair. Nina is looking right at me, but she doesn’t see through the darkness.
“What’s happening?” Rhys says in my ear.
“What is it?” Nina says in the street.
But Gane is already walking again. “Nothing,” he says. “A feeling.” Like he felt my presence, but couldn’t be sure.
Nina waits a moment, then follows.
I pat Axela on the shoulder with a shaking hand and whisper, “Good girl.” She nuzzles my palm.
Nina and Gane are a full block north when I creep to the doorway. I can’t follow them on Axela, but on foot I’m nearly silent. I touch the sword and bow on my back to make sure they’re secure, then step into the street, watching for puddles of melted snow.
“Stay back,” I whisper to my wrist. “Or come up a different avenue. They’re moving too slowly.”
I follow them for three more blocks, flitting from doorway to doorway, ducking behind the rusted hulks of vehicles. Holding my breath and praying they don’t hear/see/feel me. But this is what I was made for. I see every rock I might disturb, every depression that might trip me up.
Nina and Gane ride side by side, stiff-backed. If they are speaking, it’s too quiet for me to hear.
Finally, after another slow block, I see why they came north. Parked on a street corner, right out in the open, is a dirty but intact vehicle I recognize. I saw dozens of them on the streets of Cleveland a few months back. It’s an armored Humvee in faded camouflage on huge knobby tires. A Red Guard stands next to it, masked.
“They have a Humvee,” I say, feeling like I’ve been punched in the stomach.
The truck, assuming it works—and why wouldn’t it if they came all the way out here?—will allow them to travel faster and farther than us. It won’t get tired like our horses.
“Impossible,” Noble says.
“I’m looking right at it.”
Nina and Gane dismount, and the Red Guard takes the reins of both horses. Nina gets in the driver’s seat. The big diesel engine turns over a few times before grumbling to life. A cloud of oily smoke rises from the back. Nina drives it west, presumably toward the Lincoln Bridge. In a few seconds it’s gone, hidden behind the next block of buildings.
I turn to run for Axela, but she already came out to follow the other horses. The group canters toward me, and I meet them halfway, pausing to jump onto Axela’s back.
“West?” Noble says as I spur my horse forward.
“West,” I repeat.
The Humvee isn’t the most subtle thing on the planet. It’s so loud we could follow it by sound alone, but the giant plume of dust it kicks up is all we need. They take the huge suspension bridge that doesn’t exist in our world. The bridge is decrepit, with cables hanging loose and swaying in the wind.
After the bridge, the cities are gone. There is no New Jersey, just flat black ground for miles, as though some enormous bulldozer just came and swept everything away. It hits me that I’m really riding a horse across a dead and empty land, trying to stop my clone from destroying the world.
An hour later, the land doesn’t stay flat. It begins to slope upward into a hilly area. The path curls left and right around rocks and boulders the same color as the sky. We approach a bus on its side, rusted and gutted from the bottom, slightly buried, like a long rusty cave.
When we get closer, the back becomes visible. It says SCHOOL BUS, then STOP, then STATE LAW. The bones inside look too small.
No one speaks. We gallop on. The horses wheeze and foam at the mouth, but we only slow enough to keep them alive. I pat Axela from time to time and whisper sorry. The horses don’t complain, almost like they know where they’re taking us and why.
When the school bus is a yellow speck on the horizon, I hear a voice inside my head. It’s not Noah’s.
“Miranda…” it says.
I can feel my pulse. I look at the others, but their faces are forward.
“Let me out! Let me out! LET ME OUT!” it screams.
I close my eyes and shake my head, ears ringing. No, no no no.
Peter is suddenly to my right. “What’s wrong? Miranda, what’s wrong?”
Everyone is staring.
I know that voice.
“I heard Nina’s voice,” I whisper to him. My eyes ache with tears I won’t let fall. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
For a moment, Peter looks at his hand holding the mane of his horse. I know how torn he is. I should run.
“We need you,” he whispers back. “There’s nowhere for you to go out here. You can’t give her control. Do you hear me?”
I nod, waiting for her to return, but she’s quiet. I’m still me.
Ten minutes later the hard ground softens to sand. The crumbling earth changes from gray-black to a dark blue hue. The horses struggle up a hill slowly, footing uneven, then slide down the other side. The dust plume from the Humvee is gone, but the sand holds the deep tread marks well. The tracks guide us like paint in the road.
“Stay ready,” Noble says. “These hills are infested.”
“With?” Rhys says.
“Guess,” Sophia says.
My fingers brush the medallion on my chest, then grasp the bow on my back. I pull it off, lay it across my lap, nock an arrow, and keep my fingers on it, ready to pull back in an instant. My fingertips are sweaty inside my gloves, but the tiny scales keep my grip sure.
We crest another hill and reach flat land again except for directly in front of us, where the ground has split apart in a wide fissure. From space it must look like a deep, ragged cut in bluish skin. We coax our horses closer. The sandy ground is ripped up with claw marks—eyeless claws, wide and deep. Peter’s stallion tosses his head around and snorts. Rhys’s stops altogether until he kicks a few times. Smart horses.
“There,” Noble says.
The Humvee is parked at the bottom of the chasm, in the narrow strip of land where the two walls me
et. Nina and Gane are crouched next to it, studying something in the dirt. Seeing Nina makes my heart thrum. Adrenaline burns away my aches.
Nina keeps watch while Gane stands up and holds his arms out, facing away from us. The ground churns at his feet and begins to break apart and flow into a pile on his left. He’s digging a hole with his mind. The sight chills the sweat on my skin. He can lift a horse. He can root us in place. It’s possible he could lift the Humvee and throw it at us before we had a chance to fight.
Only one way to discover his limitations.
“They’ll see us if we descend on horses,” Sophia says. There’s a winding road cut into the valley on the right.
“We move on foot from here,” Noble says. “Gane can’t control all of us at once. Or if he does, his hold will be weak. His ability comes from a power pack under his armor, wired through his whole nervous system, and it’ll be hot from digging the hole. Don’t try destroying it—the pack is indestructible.” So that’s the bump I saw under his vest earlier, when he was walking me to the cells.
Over his shoulder, Noble asks the three Roses, “Can you three handle the girl?”
“No question,” Rhys says.
Peter nods, but his eyes go to me.
“Miranda?” Noble says.
“Yes,” I say. I can handle her as long as I stay myself.
The valley walls are dotted with dark openings in the rock—caves. A narrow white form passes just behind one of the cave openings, half hidden in the gloom.
Noble was right; this place is infested.
“They’ll overwhelm us,” I say.
Axela shifts her weight and tosses her head. Sitting here makes me want to scream. I have to move and fight to clear my mind.
Noble frowns. “No, I don’t think so. The eyeless are watching. They want to see who gets the Torch. If they do come, use your medallions. Get the Torch at any cost, but make sure you can escape with it.”
“What happens when one of us gets the Torch?” Rhys says.
“Try to use it,” Noble says, dropping a hand on Rhys’s shoulder.
“This is suicide.” I’m surprised it’s Sophia who says it. She gazes over the valley like the rest of us and shakes her head slowly. “This is suicide, Rhys.”