Frost

by Manners, Harry

  “All this, what’s happened today, you, this place—it’s crazy. It’s all crazy. But I feel… right,” he said slowly. “This is right.” He nodded, then reinforced it with another. “This is what I’m meant for.” He looked to Kat and the others. “They’ve been waiting all their lives for this. I think I’ve been waiting for it too.”

  “Creatures of destiny. You’re all the same.”

  “I never had a choice in this, did I? This was set in stone since my Mom went into labour?”

  “Messed up, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You get used to it.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  Jack found himself smiling again. A moment of contentment blossomed between them, just two men—

  Well, close enough, Jack thought.

  —enjoying one another’s company.

  Maybe we’ll pull through. Maybe I will see it.

  That golden thought twinkled in his mind’s eye, a shining light in the murky fuzz that lay ahead, a dream so potent it threatened to rip his heart out through his ribcage.

  But underneath all that lay a calm accepting certainty that he would never see the endless bounty of adventures lying out there across the reaches of All Where.

  He sighed. “You’re reading my mind again, aren’t you?”

  “You can feel it now?”

  Jack nodded, looking away, at the others as they settled down into silence, tapping away at terminals, coordinating with the teams across the world.

  “It’s coming to you fast. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anybody light up like you.”

  “You going to tell me I’m some lost prince, the all-powerful Chosen One?”

  “Sorry, no dice. Like I said—”

  “I know. The Web always gives a way.”

  “Now you’re reading my mind.”

  Jack hadn’t done it consciously, it had just happened, a mental pinch high in his head similar to a tightening muscle. Yesterday it would have frightened him, suddenly having that power. Now it was as natural as plucking a pebble from a stream.

  Kat, Gant and Joblonsky stood before them, kitted out in full. Even their hefty complement of gear couldn’t quite make up for the memories flashing through Jack’s head: flying shrapnel, caterwauling through the air; shrapnel that had once been police cruisers. And claws, and a pair of unforgiving, glowing eyes.

  Kat’s gaze lingered on Hartree and Forman and the others on the monitors for a final moment, then her face hardened. “We’re ready.”

  Jack and Barry nodded. This was it, the last moment before the plunge. Every step from here was a step towards Harper. And they would go, to whatever end.

  “Okay,” Jack said. Forcing that one word from his lips was like pushing a gobstopper out from between his teeth.

  Then the moment was over and they were moving back towards the garage, leaving the atrium behind.

  “What are you going to do, when you get in there?” Kat said under her breath.

  No damn idea, Jack thought.

  19

  The tunnel changed once again, its walls made not of dark rock, but of glittering crystals. The temperature had been rising steadily as Harper descended into the earth, reaching the stifling heat of a coal mine, close to fiery innards of the earth. But then it had started getting colder again, a gentle cooling at first, then a sharp decline, until now ice condensed on Harper’s jacket.

  In a thin halo around his body, it snowed in the darkness.

  Harper wondered how far he had descended, but then chastised himself for such foolishness. He had lived too long in this simple, linear, featureless place, where distances and times were regular and unchanging. But not this place: the Beacons were true links to All Where. That meant he could have been a few hundred yards down, or several miles.

  There wasn’t even any guarantee that he was still beneath Manhattan.

  “I’ve missed things being interesting,” he said, pulling himself forwards, relishing the silky sensation of the frozen crystals against his skin. A slice of home.

  Soon I’ll finally be out of here. I’ll get my reward.

  The tunnel’s claustrophobic airlessness eased. Wind touched his dead, plastic cheeks. Wind, underground, far under all the world’s tunnels and drains and the deepest bore holes. Cold, biting cold, touched with notes of odours that hailed from other places.

  A few steps more and the tunnel peeled back, opening out like some great icy maw. The glowing crystal became unbroken and uniform, taking on a constant radius of curvature, bending up so high that even the hawk-like acuity of Harper’s second sight couldn’t quite make out the ceiling. The sphere, a vast bubble in the earth, could have housed a football stadium. Utterly closed off in the deep impenetrable blackness, it had its own clouds, strange formations too thick to be mere water vapour, too thick and stodgy, like marshmallow floating in oil.

  From their depths floated whispers, raining down in pattering showers, some human, some not. Old things moved just out of sight, amongst the spaces between places, shifting through queer impossible angles.

  Harper turned in a full circle, arms out, trying to breathe it all in, subsume the strange charge of the atmosphere into his pores.

  Yes, indeed. A slice of home.

  The vast glittering geode, so deep and lost under the earth that no man could reach it even if he dug straight down from the surface, throbbed with Harper’s sharp intake of breath.

  Centre stage, thrusting up into the clouds, stood the eternal obsidian bark of a gargantuan tree.

  Milton Harper took another long drag on the sweet winds, which flowed outwards from its branches. Amongst those smells he caught scintillating flashes of lives lived long ago, worlds fallen and yet to dawn, and amongst it all, power.

  Harper began his approach. It took him some time to notice his claws, extended of their own accord, quivering at the extent of their reach.

  The strange, wicked creature giggled in the dark. He sang to himself, “Mr Harper, are those steak knives, or are you just pleased to see me?”

  20

  Manhattan stopped for nothing. In all its long bustling life, the metropolis had not slept a moment, even in the wake of depression, war, and terrorist attack. It seemed the same rule extended to invasion by quasi-immortals hell bent on ending the world.

  Under the cloak of darkness, the city seemed busy and content. There was no knowing whether those who had witnessed the madness had locked themselves away at home, or whether the crowd had rebooted to a clean slate, erasing the chaos from its collective memory.

  Yellow tape cordoned off destruction, reporters interviewed witnesses. Yet there was no mention of the other-worlders, almost as though nobody had quite seen them, really seen them, at all.

  Though the crowds seemed blind to it, Jack could still see signs, the mark of powers that didn’t belong had scarred the streets. Something welled up from somewhere lost inside him, formerly locked away in that secret place he once could only reach through books.

  The motorcycles whined like a trio of wasps, taking a route through the pre-dawn traffic that felt oddly choreographed, a sick and lethal dance that would end in pain and disfigurement, should a single door open unexpectedly, or brake pedal be pushed at the wrong moment.

  They flew at sickening speed along Forty-Sixth. When they left the garage, Jack had nursed the taste of bile in his mouth. But now the strange other sight captivated him, and he felt nothing but wide-eyed alertness, every nerve strung, every neuron firing.

  The city zipped by. Here Scot-but-not and vampire had gone toe to toe; here Barnes & Noble had exploded into a giant ice crystal; here, three police cruisers had shattered into twisted piles of police officers and scrap metal.

  Fear slipped away like gruel down an unblocked drain. Jack Shannon, the real Jack, so long buried under a feckless apologetic exterior, poked his head above the surface for the first time, and breathe
d deep.

  Kat’s body moved under him and he went with it, leaning and pivoting with her. The rigid terror that had before only exacerbated the bike’s instability melted away, and they moved smooth as silk through the early morning traffic. He grinned like some maniacal baboon, hurtling toward certain death, but also life—the life he was always destined for.

  When the subway stairs came in sight, Jack prepared for the bike to stop, relaxing his grip a little. He almost toppled off the back when Kat gunned the engine and mounted the sidewalk.

  “Hold on!” Kat said, and Jack felt her thighs tense around the bike. He followed suit with a wordless cry as his stomach fluttered, and the bike nosed down onto the staircase. Teeth chattering and vision humming as though a bee had taken flight behind his eyes, Jack surrendered to her skill and let her guide them down several flights of grungy old steps.

  It was a hard ride, but they stayed vertical, bumping down into the dank subway until they reached the barriers. The others buzzed down beside them as Kat brought the bike to a jarring stop and killed the engine, whipping off her helmet and dismounting before a guard could do so much as utter a startled bray.

  The guard was a rotund man in his late forties, sunken masses of flesh hanging under his eyes. A white shirt pulled tight around his apple-shaped belly sat atop squat little legs that looked comical as they worked busily. “Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He fumbled at his belt for his baton.

  Kat clutched the butt of her MP4 and pulled it round, not pointing it at him, just giving him a better view. The others pulled up beside them and the engines cut out. Gant and Joblonsky had stopped so that their own weapons were in full view to cap off the effect.

  The guard’s face twitched and his fingers stilled. A strained grin. His palms opened and went up into the air. “You’re on camera, you got maybe two minutes before a whole lot of trouble comes your way,” he said.

  “Jack, get going,” Kat said without taking her eyes off the guard. “We’ve got this.”

  “I mean it, lady!” the guard barked, his pudgy jowls wobbling. “Put ’em down now, lay ’em nice and flat, and maybe they won’t shoot when they get here.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I mean it. They going to kill you all!”

  A young man in a sports tracksuit bopped down the stairs, nodding along to his MP3 player and whistling, sweaty from a morning jog. He almost made it to the bottom of the stairs before he saw them. His lips paused in a perfect ‘O’ as he caught sight of the hold up, one foot balanced on the bottom step. He held there a beat in suspended animation, then tipped an imaginary cap in a manner that said carry on, span on his heels and jogged back up to the street.

  The guard cursed him.

  Kat flicked a hand at the guard and backed him up against the wall, clearing the path toward the turnstiles.

  Jack looked off deeper into the subway station. He’d never thought of the subway as ominous before, but right now it looked pretty spooky. The echo of distant trains squealing and droning through the maze of tunnels reached his ears, ghostly wails in the gloom.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Barry said. “They’ve got this.”

  “Go, do it,” Kat said.

  “You sure you’ll be okay?” Jack said.

  “Sure.” She handed him a walkie talkie. “Take this. I’ll try to keep in touch as long as I can.”

  The guard cried out. “You don’t get it. You pull out guns down here? You never saw that little snafu on 9/11, huh? Storming public transport—they’re gonna be shooting to kill, people, and they comin’ right now.” In the few seconds he’d been against the wall, his pits had soaked through and his forehead had begun streaming with milky rivulets of perspiration. He looked a decent enough guy, genuinely scared. “Go on, now, jus’ lay down and put your hands on your heads. Go on, now.”

  Jack looked to Kat. “He’s probably right, you know. I don’t think they’re going to take kindly to this.”

  She looked at him angrily a moment, but then she checked herself. “You’re so new to this it’s not even funny,” she said. “Why do you think we rode in here like that?”

  “Coolness factor?”

  “He’s no guard, he’s Harper’s man. You can count on every subway station on this stretch of the line being in his pocket. Whoever is coming, they’re nothing to do with the law.”

  The guard grinned, more of a leer. “What you talkin’ ’bout?”

  “Shut up.” She cast a withering glance his way.

  His face relaxed slowly into a mild pout. He shrugged, then, to Jack’s surprise, relaxed back against the wall in a lazy slouch. Despite the guns trained at his chest, he started picking his teeth. “Worth a try.” His voice had none of the honest-man about it now. “He’ll be down there by now.”

  Kat gestured her rifle to the man’s closed fist. After a moment, he opened it up, showing a small metal cube. On top, a red light winked. A silent alarm.

  She arched an eyebrow wryly at Jack.

  “Ah.”

  The guard turned to him. “Don’t bother, kid. He’ll tear your balls out through your nose and use them to gag your mouth, while he eats your dreams. This world belongs to him now.”

  “He’s a colourful one,” Barry muttered.

  Yesterday, Jack would have locked his gaze on the floor, skirted around such a man, mumbled apologies. But not today. Today, he looked the guard in the eye and said, “We’ll see.”

  Kat flicked her head in the direction of the turnstiles. “Go. They’re going to throw everything they got at us. We’ll give you as long as we can.”

  Barry was already on the other side. Jack hesitated a moment, then pushed his way through. He felt the moment of separation, like Velcro tearing. And then they were two groups, them out there standing guard, he and Barry on the inside.

  Gant and Joblonsky had vanished into the station to take up position, their footsteps nearby but their bodies melted into the walls.

  Kat, alone with the guard, was smiling. For a moment Jack wanted to scream What’s so funny? but then he saw all the long years she had waited for this. Like him, she was finally at home, doing what she was meant to do.

  “Go, now,” she said. “Make it count.”

  He nodded and followed Barry deeper into the station, heading for the platform. Just before they turned the corner, she cried out, “Jack!”

  He skidded to a halt and arched his neck back to catch sight of her, half obscured by the turnstile.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He paused a moment on the step, a swimmer taking one last gulp of air before diving into the abyss. Then Barry was calling him from the platform, and Jack descended.

  “I hope you’re picking up a good signal, skipper, because we need a heading.”

  Jack said nothing until he stood beside Barry. He felt nothing at all until that moment; no twinge of shame or panic, trusting it would come, believing it would come.

  And come it did, a dizzying pulse of certainty that crashed down over him with the force of a jack-hammer. His internal compass span around and locked quivering to his right. He pointed down the northbound tunnel. “That way.”

  “All right.” Barry popped his collar, gauged his stance, and jumped down onto the tracks. His solid footfalls echoed long and hollow, seeming to spiral down in infinite regression; ever quieter, ever farther away, but never ending.

  “What if a train comes?”

  “You want to wait for one instead? Maybe we can share a copy of the morning paper and a cherry latte.”

  Jack looked up and down the platform. Another pulse in his head, and he knew there wouldn’t be any more trains coming down this stretch of the line. Not for a while. Maybe not ever again.

  I wonder if anybody else feels something amiss.

  In his mind’s eye he saw all across the city: the multitudes of lives subtly shifting to give them this brief window; those who decided to have another b
eer before heading home, realised they did want that second lap-dance, or looked at the glittering city lights and decided to take the two mile walk home instead of taking the train.

  The Web always gives a way.

  Jack stepped up to the edge. “You don’t have to be a smartass.” He hopped down clumsily.

  “Try and stop me,” Barry said, catching him to stop him sprawling onto the electrified line.

  They started off down the tunnel, Jack in the lead, guided by humming mojo spilling over like a stopped fountain behind his eyes. He could feel every part of this place, now, taste it. The way ahead couldn’t have been clearer if it had been signposted in neon and dancing girls.

  “You good?” Barry said behind him.

  “Never better. I’ll take that latte, though.”

  “Win or lose, Jacky Boy, you’ll get your latte.”

  “Win or lose?”

  “If we fail, they’ll be plenty of them lying around.”

  21

  Harper kept his arms out to the side, embracing the obsidian tree in all its splendour as he approached. Looming above him, it thrust straight up such that its canopy was far above his field of view, only the girth of the trunk and its bulbous principal branches visible.

  The cold chewed at the space around him now. Any of the pitiful creatures up on the surface would have been reduced to a mewling wreck of twitching nerves if they strayed this close. But Harper breathed deep, filling his lungs with air turned silky and thick as soup.

  Static pressed upon his thick hide, arcs of plasma leaping the cracks between his clothes, dancing between the splintered bark of the tree and upon its perfectly formed—yet equally black—leaves, together producing an eerie subsonic hum akin to power lines.

  “Did you miss me? I hope you hadn’t started to wonder if I might not come,” he crooned.