by Jack Worr
Mason followed after him slowly, keeping his head turned to watch the agents, who were approaching on a diagonal. They were around twenty feet away now.
Mason heard one of the children in line call for her father, and he quickly glanced her way. Maybe she sensed these weren’t good men. That was okay, Mason wouldn’t give them the chance to harm her if they’d had that in mind.
“Where do you think you’re going?” one of them said.
“Home.” Mason stopped. “And you’re staying here.” It took Mason a moment to work out it was Fredriks who had spoken, since they looked different here. Mason almost didn’t recognize them. Almost.
Ehd looked at his partner. “Hear that? We’re staying.”
“Well,” Fredriks responded, “then he is too.”
“I think you’re right.”
They charged the remaining distance quickly, but nowhere near as quickly as Mason had come to expect from them. Ironically, their slowness stunned him enough that they were able to slam into him, sending him to the floor.
Mason twisted and kicked. Suddenly the weight was off him. He opened his eyes, and saw the men getting up from the floor, several feet away, drawing guns. Large, strange looking guns, different then he’d seen them carry before. But guns were guns, after all.
Crap, he thought, got up, and ran toward the door.
A shot rang out and then Mason was outside, running toward Martynn, who was stopped and facing him.
“Mr Grey…” he gaped at Mason.
“Come on,” Mason said. The world was crazy, like a video game world with the draw distance set to LOW, and it was giving him vertigo.
“You’re shot.”
Mason looked down at his chest. He chuckled. “Just the stitches. Must have burst open.”
“Stop!”
Mason and Martynn turned to look at the agents, who both had their weapons trained on them. Behind the agents, still exiting the building, were several helpers, followed by the two children, and the older man who appeared to be trying to get the children back inside.
“Get—” one of the agents began, but then he stopped, looking up at the sky.
Soon everyone but Mason and Martynn were looking that way.
Martynn turned and looked. Mason continued looking at the blood draining from his chest. The stitches had really torn.
“Oh dear Crown,” Martynn muttered.
Mason turned and looked at the man, face turned skyward. Mason followed his gaze.
In the sky was a dark form. It moved like nothing Mason had seen. Fire spewed from its front and fog twirled around its rear, pulled forward by its slipstream and monumental mass. It emerged from that great wall of fog like some demon god of myth. It was too large to believe it to be flying.
But it is.
The blunder, Mason thought. His hand went to the wound in his chest. The blunder turned… Dreaming Blunderbuss. He was dreaming. The thing in the sky was a nightmare, but it was his. He understood this now, grasped this most basic of concepts. An axiom that the world chose to believe, to take as a given. To believe to be true despite the fundamentally absolute inability to prove that it was.
He grabbed Martynn by the shoulder. “Let’s go.”
Martynn was pulled easily. Mason stumbled forward, no destination but away from this place. He heard screaming, the child calling for her father. But he knew the agents would follow him.
He blinked his eyes rapidly as the day grew darker. He looked up, expecting to see the impossibility. But he saw nothing, only heard its scream, once, then silence.
He could see the sun. Then why was it getting dark?
Martynn put an arm around Mason, preventing him from falling. When had Mason stopped pulling him?
“You need rest, medical help. You need to make us a door!”
“A door,” Mason said. He looked at his feet. They seemed all tangled up, incapable of supporting his weight.
“Yes!”
Mason took a breath that smelled of green. He held it. Then he looked up. “There.” The breath left him with the word in a cloud of light. Mason pulled away, and stumbled forward into the door that appeared from nowhere. He opened it and fell through, Martynn close behind him.
44
Following Mason through the ghost town they’d just stumbled into, Martynn watched the man who had saved him bleed out in front of him, stumbling aimlessly, doors appearing then disappearing as he fell this way and that. Martynn stayed close, in case Mason fell, and so he wouldn’t get left behind.
Mason took one of the doors, seemingly at random, and they left the dark, abandoned town and arrived in the Fog.
Martynn looked around, and knew it was not somewhere he wanted to be. Forests blazed with blue-green flames in the near distance, and large shapes moved in the shadows of the Fog.
It wasn’t beyond the Fog, but it was as far as Martynn had ever physically traveled.
Mason slammed into a door. It swung open and he fell through.
Then it began to shut, and Martynn dashed through it before it had the chance.
Now they were on a beach, looking out onto foggy outcroppings of ocean.
Above them in the distance hovered something even larger than the flying impossibility that had allowed them their escape. It was something the likes which Martynn had never seen nor imagined. It was nothing from Alterra. It was too alien, too incomprehensible.
He was so taken by this sight, that it was the slamming of the door that alerted him to the disappearance of Mason into another world.
Martynn ran to the door, feeling slow, his body not used to the exertion. He tried the handle. It turned, but the door didn’t open. He banged on it. “Mr Grey! Mr Grey!” He banged. “Mason!”
His banging faded as the door slowly dissipated. Soon he was hitting air. Instead of a door, he was now staring at a fog covered ocean. He wondered if that was where the great whale dwelt.
He fell, limp, to the sand. He had been so close. So close to seeing Serafina again. And now, now he was stuck here.
He scowled. No, he wasn’t going to give up. There was still hope, still the Guile. He could go back there, find them again. He didn’t know how he would get down there, but he knew there were tunnels. Tunnels no one had successfully navigated.
He would just have to be the first.
Yes, he—
Someone grabbed his shoulder.
He spun, hitting their hand away, but it was like hitting rock. “Ow!” He withdrew his hand and looked at his assailant—who was nothing of the sort.
“How’d you get ahead of me?” Mason asked. His shirt was almost completely red.
45
This time, Martynn kept a tight grip of Mason’s shoulder as he traveled through the doors.
Mason didn’t appear to know where he was going, but assuming the doors were finite, they would have to eventually reach their destination.
Who says they are finite?, a voice whispered in Martynn’s ear. He turned to look at Mason, but Mason seemed oblivious. Martynn used his free hand to wipe his face. Don’t lose it now, he thought. He hadn’t made it this far to quit from exertion.
They went through many doors, Martynn constantly looking over his shoulder for pursuers, but he never saw any. In fact, he saw no one at all, until they went through a particular door, which looked like all the others—perhaps more grey than the rest—and found themselves in the middle of a city.
At first, Martynn thought it was Waldron’s Gate and panicked. But then he saw its inhabitants. Creatures twice the height of a man, with scaled skin of blue or green. Others who looked enough like men, except for their height and ears that were pointed like a dog’s.
There were humans as well, but none seemed bothered by the strange inhabitants of their city.
Maybe the city isn’t theirs, Mason whispered.
Martynn looked at him again, but saw he hadn’t spoken, at least not in Martynn’s ear, as he was now about to walk through the door to a shop, several fe
et away. Martynn looked at his hand, which was holding not Mason’s shoulder, but air.
That’s no shop.
Martynn ran, his disused legs aching, his feet burning, begging for relief, begging to stop and just sit down here, in this place so much like home.
He ran into one of the tall, scaled creatures in his rush.
“Sorry!” it screamed after him. He ignored it.
Mason opened the door. Martynn tripped, stumbled. Mason stepped through the door. Martynn’s arms pinwheeled. The door began to close and Martynn was pitched headlong into it.
Mason stopped at the sound. “Are you all right?” He helped him up.
“I’d greatly appreciate it if you wouldn’t leave me behind like that,” Martynn said as he rubbed his head.
“Sorry.”
Martynn looked at Mason’s shirt again. “How are you still alive?”
Mason followed his gaze. Then his eyebrows raised. “Those stitches really aren’t doing their job.”
“You were—” Martynn stopped himself. If Mason could manifest things, pull them from one place to the next, maybe telling him that his wound was more dire than he thought wasn’t such a good idea. “Yes,” he said instead. “Quite poor stitching. We should get you to someone more capable.”
He looked around the shop they were in, surprised. Then he looked back out the still-open door. The scene was the same strange town filled with the same strange creatures. “Where are we?”
Mason shrugged. A door appeared. He opened it, stopped, looked at Martynn. “You coming?”
The place that followed was another like Martynn had never seen. Other places the doors had led had been disorienting, foreign. But this, this was something entirely different. ‘Disorienting’ was inadequate in the same way as calling the universe ‘large’.
Above them in the sky floated the Blunderbuss, except it was doubled, as if the sky were a lake reflecting the top half upside down. But if that were the case, they’d be underwater. And they weren’t.
It floated there, with no apparent support, bellowing steam of greyest grey from both ends. Nothing like the Blunderbuss he was used to, which bellowed white from the top and black down below.
There came a sound like something breaking, and Martynn’s attention was drawn to Mason, who had stumbled through another door. There were several around them now, and Mason still appeared to be taking them at random.
Mason passed through the threshold, and Martynn ran after. Behind was pure white, purer than the most unblemished, highly bleached sheet of paper.
The door began to close and Martynn had to turn his body to the side to make it.
With the closing of the door came darkness. Pure, and complete. Martynn opened his eyes, but they were open already. He could see nothing.
He turned, reaching out for the door. But it was gone. He recalled the sound of breaking he’d heard, and wondered, Was this death?
46
Mason collapsed. He was so tired. It felt so good to just rest. His chest ached for some reason, though it seemed to be getting better now.
He knew that Martynn was worried, was wondering if he was dead.
Who’s dead, the voice said.
Mason lay down. He floated on the floor of nothing.
We are dead. Who? You? Him? Us both? This is the end.
“Shut up!” Mason shouted, and his voice boomed. A thunderclap in a concrete cell. Something shattered—shatter, shatter, shatter in the mind. The soul is shatter when the clocks realign—and the darkness crumbled like a broken mirror, falling away in glistening shards.
They were plummeting now. They were stopped with no transition. Grass was under them, and Mason realized they were in a park.
Martynn gasped at the sudden appearance of something, anything. He looked around. “Is… Is this beyond? Beyond the Fog?”
“This is New York,” Mason replied. He’d never been to New York.
Before he could say more, a great gaping void opened in the sky. What are you running from? Is it from me?
Martynn was one of the first of many to look up, open-mouthed and gaping, at the opening, from which emerged something impossible. Something this world had never seen.
47
New York City. Early Evening.
The sky is scarlet like it is wont to be at this hour. The city below is busy, going about its important, its unimportant, its trivial, and its completely worthless tasks.
From this height, individuals aren’t even visible. They aren’t even ants.
But below, the people on the street, were they to look up, oh, they would see.
A great rend opens in the sky, spilling fog thick as water. It oozes through, and there is a thunderous roar as the two atmospheres collide.
This is not the interesting part.
That first thing to spill from the hole will go unnoted for a long time. It will only be recognized after it’s too late.
For now, everyone will be focused on what comes next. Oh, and here it is.
Children are often the first ones to spot the strange and unusual. Perhaps because they have fewer things to worry about. Or perhaps because their worries are so inconsequential, so transient, that it’s easy to distract them. Perhaps they are just more observant.
None of this matters, except to note that the first person to see the gaping hole where stars should have been was a little boy. But he sounded no alarm; he was too busy imagining a story. He would call it, Cloud Riders. He bit his lip. Or maybe… CLOUD MONSTERS. Yes, he liked that.
The next person to see this, just seconds following, was also a child. She was slightly older than the boy, so perhaps this is why she looked over at her mother and said, “What’s that?”
The mother, busy on her phone but still enamored enough with her young daughter to not be jaded, glanced at the child, then followed her upturned gaze.
The screen of the phone shattered as it collided with pavement, and the man on the other end was shouting now. Ms Finley didn’t care anymore. Either what she was seeing was real, and what Tom was saying didn’t matter, or she was crazy, and nothing did.
It didn’t take long after this. When two people are frozen, looking at the sky, even in a city like New York, people take note. A teenage girl with a new cellphone, who lifted it to the sky and hit record. A teenage boy stopping for first this girl, then for other, more awe-inspiring sights. A fat man in a suit and hat.
Not a lot, but enough, when what they were looking at was so impossible that those who spot it completely forget everything else in their life and surroundings. And in that way, they too become children, if only for the briefest moment in time.
Normally the government, the military, they would be on top of something like this, have it on radar, satellite. But when something comes from literally nowhere, there is little they can do.
And so it was that a vast shape flew screeching and shooting fire into the night, and so it was that no jets intercepted it, and so it was that the people who thought it to be fake, a projection, or a demonstration of some billionaire showing off his wealth, were quickly proved wrong as the flames collided with a skyscraper, and immediately set it alight.
“Genevieve, run. Run!”
Her daughter listened. Then Ms Finley took her own advice.
48
A nearly empty rooftop.
He was inexperienced, but God was he hot. And young. And hot.
Did she mention hot?
His jeans fell to the roof. She smiled. Oh yes, her suspicion was correct.
She slunk toward him, shedding layers as she went.
He embraced her, and lifted her from her feet. She squealed and laughed, throwing her head back to expose her neck.
Then all sound emanating from her ceased, the man’s—boy’s, she thought now—seeking mouth, his insistence against her stomach, seeming petty and annoying.
But she didn’t have the presence of mind to do anything but push his head away.
“Oh, feisty eh
? I know how you…” But he too was now looking at the same thing, having inadvertently followed her gaze, and his autonomic nervous system decided to change where it was storing blood to redirect it to more useful areas as the first screech filled the city, and fire lit the sky.
49
“What was that?”
“Don’t try to distract me you a-hole! You are not getting away with it that easy.” She sliced at the air. “Not this time. You are going—”
“Shut up,” he said mildly. He waved a hand at her, looking out the floor-to-ceiling window.
Her mouth worked, so angry she couldn’t even speak. She wanted to curse. She managed not to, but inarticulate sounds escaped her throat. She couldn’t take it, that mother— stupid dumb— idiot, the —faced —er. She stormed toward him, ready to slap his piece of —— mother— stupid head, and then maybe stab a —ing —— into his —— ear. That stupid piece of—
Then she saw what he was looking at, and she screamed.
50
6:01PM. An alley near W 39th Street.
“Don’t make me say it again! Now!”
“Jesus Mark just give it to him,” Jackson said.
“I’m not giving this waste of humanity anything.” He looked at their assailant. “Look at him. He’s shaking. He’s not gonna shoot me here.” He gestured around at the area.
The deserted area, Jackson thought. They were all alone. He’d had a feeling it was a bad idea to take a shortcut. He wasn’t glad he’d been right.
“He’s a coward,” Mark said.
“Man, I will fucking shoot you.” The robber—one Phillip Robinson, a misdemeanor and three speeding tickets to his name—held out his free hand for the wallet.
When Mark reached out to finally give it, there was obvious relief on the robber’s face.
This turned to rage when, using the wallet, Mark slapped the hand instead and then withdrew the wallet before Mr Robinson could get a grip on it.