“I have a thirst for justice,” Ziva said, “that being back helps to satisfy. I don’t remember much about—the time in between. But I don’t get the impression that I was—settled. As you might suspect of a . . . murdered spirit.”
“But,” Sloane said.
“But.” Ziva sighed. “But the longer I’m here, the more distinctly I feel that—my time is done, and every moment that I extend it is a violation of . . . something.” She lifted her shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “Besides—look at me. I’m a horror.” She tapped her jaw where the siphon covered the hole that exposed her to the roots of her teeth. It was the first time Sloane had considered that maybe the same revulsion she had felt when she first looked at Ziva was what the woman herself felt when she looked in the mirror. No one wanted to wake up as a living dead thing.
“Have you ever talked to Mox about this?”
Ziva shook her head. “He needs me. I can’t leave while he still does.”
Sloane nodded, but she couldn’t help but think that people didn’t just spontaneously stop needing their friends.
A loud, deep sound startled Sloane into a yelp. Dust shook loose from the walls and fell all around them like snowflakes. Sloane heard distant shouts and footsteps through the walls.
One of Ziva’s eyes rolled over to focus on Sloane. It was time.
They walked the path Sloane remembered, the one she had memorized as she followed Cyrielle to the Hall of Summons that first time, when she had shattered the skylight with her siphon and then collapsed. She led the way around pillars and beneath arches, through the grayish light of a coming storm. And then they reached the heavy doors of the Hall of Summons with the gold plaque that named the room and the year it was constructed, 1985.
Standing beside the doors was a security guard. Ziva whistled sharply through the siphon and sent him into the wall; his head smacked into the stone and he crumpled. She bent over him, poked her fingers between his lips, and took the whistle off his tooth. “You get the siphon,” she said to Sloane.
Sloane felt dazed. She crouched by the guard—who was alive but obviously stunned—and unclipped the siphon from his wrist, thankful the mechanism was simple. She slid it from his fingers and tossed it into the Hall of Summons, where Ziva waited. Sloane followed her in, and Ziva closed the door behind her.
“I can set a temporary working to bar the doors,” Ziva said. “But it will deteriorate within minutes. If we need more than that, I’ll have to reset it, so don’t let me forget.”
Sloane nodded. She walked to the siphon in the floor, which was covered by a gold plate, six feet across. The tickle she had felt at the back of her neck below the Camel was now distinct pressure on both sides of her head, like someone was trying to crush her skull. There was no mistaking it anymore—the Needle was calling to her. The question was whether she wanted to answer.
Ziva was kneeling beside the siphon fortis. She had tried to lift the large metal cover with a whistle, but it didn’t budge. Now she had hooked her fingers beneath it and was pushing against its weight. “It’s resistant to magic,” she said. “I think we have to move it by hand.”
Sloane knelt beside her and braced herself against the lip of the cover. Even with both of them pushing against it, it hardly moved, and the edge bit into Sloane’s palms.
She thought of marching into the Dome, of the way the Needle had sent the front door right through the roof and made it hover.
“Shit,” Ziva said. She brought her hand down on the cover, hard. “Shit!”
“You used to live in this building, right?” Sloane said, feeling oddly detached. The Needle was another heartbeat in Sloane’s chest, a presence at her shoulder. She felt it even now, a universe away from it. And the Needle was where she always turned when she was desperate.
“Why does that matter?” Ziva sat back on her heels.
“I might have a solution,” Sloane said. “But it requires me getting to the river without going out the way we came in. Where does that door go?” She pointed to the other end of the room, where there was a rusted door. It looked small enough for a child to crawl through it, given the size of the hall.
The river was only one block north of the Camel. If she ran, she could get there and back in ten minutes.
“It’s a back door,” Ziva said. “No telling what’s out there, but you could find your way to an emergency exit.”
“Can you hold those doors?” Sloane said, gesturing to the entrance. “Just for a few minutes.”
Ziva squinted one eye at her again and then nodded.
Sloane ran for the little rusted door. Just beyond it was an empty hallway, like the one they had walked through to get into the hall, but shabbier, dirt and debris clumping in the corners, the gray stone splitting in places or missing whole chunks. It looked like a utility hallway, the pipes in the ceiling exposed.
She took a right, on a whim, and searched for the glow of an emergency exit sign. Two women pulled apart when Sloane passed them, intruding on their stolen moment. She huffed out an apology, already out of breath.
At the end of the next hallway, there was a sign directing her toward a stairwell. She burst through the door, then peered around the bottom of the stairs to check for another door. There was one, but she didn’t know where it would lead. The stairwell smelled like garbage, and she could hear footsteps above her, echoing.
She decided to take her chances. The door opened into an alley, where a line of dumpsters waited, stuffed to the brim with black garbage bags and flattened cardboard boxes. It led her to a street she didn’t recognize, but she could see the gap between the buildings ahead of her that signified the river, and she ran toward it, almost colliding with a taxi in the crosswalk. The driver honked at her and screamed something out his window, but she was already running.
Once she was across Wacker and close to the river’s edge, she slowed and climbed on top of the barrier that kept pedestrians from toppling into the water one story below. There was no time to find the stairs that led down to the river walk. Sloane’s body was burning now, tingling, aching with the need to reunite with what she had once hated so much she had mutilated herself to get rid of it.
She threw one leg over the railing and then the other, her back against the barrier . . . and then jumped.
The cold water made her gasp, so she surfaced coughing, her clothes heavy and her hair plastered to her face. Once she was able to take a deep breath again, she dove, kicking like a frog.
This time, there was no magical light to guide her down to the membrane between the worlds, thinner here in Chicago than in other places—she believed that there was something special about this place, yes; she could feel the way the city had attracted her even from childhood, beautiful and strange and glittering in the sun. The darkness that surrounded her was absolute and directionless. She followed only the pull of gravity, as if she were holding a thread looped through its eye.
She kicked, at first measured and strong, then frantic, clawing at the water to get down faster and faster. Her lungs burned, but it was no different than the burning in her chest, in her head. It occurred to her that this sensation of being deep underwater—the fire inside her, the pressure against her head, the tingling in every limb—was what she had always associated with magic, and maybe this was why. Maybe all her life had not been motion forward but motion around this moment, like something circling a drain.
She needed air. Sloane remembered the siphon on her hand and started to hum, choosing a pitch that sounded roughly like her memory of Aelia trapping air behind the handkerchief the first time she dove and adjusting it higher. There was no question of her desires; she wanted to breathe. She envisioned a bubble around her head, like a cartoon of an astronaut, and the water around her face shifted like an ocean current. Then its weight pulled away from her mouth and nose, and when she exhaled next, she heard its rasp, as if she were aboveground.
My first magical breath, she thought, and laughed a little.
&nb
sp; Above her was the rubble of the tower that made up the river bottom in Earth’s Chicago, the P wedged between hunks of concrete and steel, and below her, the tangle of plants that grew from the river bottom in Genetrix’s Chicago. She was in the space between the two worlds.
She had dropped the two pieces of the Needle in the river before Albie’s funeral. She had known then that she would always be able to find the Needle if she needed to, that it spoke to her even when she ignored its voice. She stretched out her siphon hand and hummed, not thinking about the pitch, the frequency, the line that would show on the oscilloscope. She thought only about how the Needle had helped her when she needed it to break into the Dome and destroy the magical prototype, even when she had needed it to destroy the Dark One.
She needed it again.
She hovered in the channel between Earth and Genetrix without gravity pulling her in either direction. This was the closest she had ever come to feeling weightless. She thought of Albie’s voice whispering in her ear to beckon her toward Genetrix, and she whispered into the pocket of air she had created around her head. “Come on . . .” she said. “Come on!”
Something in front of her glittered, despite the absence of light. Two slim fragments took shape in front of her; they were metallic in appearance, but not any metal ARIS scientists had been familiar with. Every part of her sang with relief. She reached for them.
The first brush against the Needle pieces shocked her and made her body go rigid. For a second she was afraid that they had pricked her again, buried themselves back in her hand, but then she saw them gleaming in her palm.
She had beckoned, and they had come. The phrase the manifestation of impossible wants had never made more sense to her. It was magic.
She pinched one half of the Needle between the fingers of her left hand and the other half with her right, keeping them in separate hands as she kicked up from the ground, swimming toward the surface.
The pocket of air around her face collapsed without warning as she swam away from the space between worlds, and she kicked harder. Her legs ached when she finally saw the light from the city above her, just a spark at first, a lit match in the dark, and then a glow. And then—air, and the river’s edge. Sloane threw herself over it and collapsed to the concrete, gasping.
“Slo.” Esther’s voice greeted her. She lifted her head. Esther stood with Matt, their hands raised—siphons cocked, as it were—aiming at Ziva, standing across from them.
Sloane coughed.
They were alive. They were safe.
Matt kept his siphon trained on Ziva, and Esther turned to point hers at Sloane.
“I can explain, obviously,” Sloane said once she could breathe again.
“You better fucking start,” Esther replied.
EXCERPT FROM
STORIES OF THE MULTIVERSE
by Rufus Egerton
Chicagoan, August 11, 1994
A man leaves his universe in search of adventure, and the unfiltered light of the sun through a torched atmosphere blinds him instantly.
A man leaves his universe in search of adventure, and he turns into a pile of ash because the heat of the parallel universe (at least three thousand degrees) causes his body to spontaneously combust.
A man leaves his universe in search of adventure, and he drowns in an ocean-covered planet. His body is devoured by opportunistic sea creatures.
A man leaves his universe in search of adventure, and he finds himself on a planet ravaged by nuclear war. He drinks contaminated water and dies.
A man leaves his universe in search of adventure, and he is murdered by cannibalistic post-apocalyptic scavengers for the meat of his flesh.
A man leaves his universe in search of adventure and he never finds his way back home.
41
NERO IS THE DARK ONE,” Sloane said. It seemed like a decent enough place to start.
Esther and Matt didn’t react at first. Sloane kept her body between them and Ziva, her arms held out from her sides. The river walk was empty, the sun only just setting. There was still time to get back to the Hall of Summons and document the internal mechanism of the siphon for Mox, still time to escape without Nero finding them. All she needed to do was convince her friends.
“Edda—who has a dislocated shoulder, by the way—said you were under some kind of . . . enchantment,” Matt said. Guilt surged in Sloane at the sight of him, though she didn’t want it to. There was no reason for it—she hadn’t betrayed him, hadn’t done anything she wouldn’t have done again given the chance to go back—but she felt it anyway. His eyes had a sharpness to them that they wouldn’t have had a few months ago.
But that, Sloane now recognized as an inevitability. Matt and Sloane had been living in a moment of held breath. The exhale had always been coming.
“And who told Edda that?” Sloane said. “Nero, obviously. Who, as I previously mentioned, is the Dark One.”
Esther was tilting her body so she could get a better look at Ziva. Her hair was up in a high ponytail. “Is that a zombie? Is it in your thrall or something?”
Ziva cleared her throat, making a sound like a rock polisher. “It’s rude to talk about someone like they aren’t there, flesh-bag.”
“Holy shit,” Esther said, eyes wide. She was shiny—quite literally; silver thread woven in with the black fibers over cowl-necked jacket, polished chrome in the siphon over her throat, a silver line on each eyelid.
“How do we know you’re not under the influence of something?” Matt said.
The pieces of the Needle made her hands, in fists at her sides, throb with energy. She still felt like she was underwater, and everything was close, right up against her.
Sloane didn’t know what to say. If they believed the Resurrectionist had warped her, then they’d think everything she said could be the result of it. Nero had ensured that they wouldn’t believe her. But she had to try.
“Last night, Nero sent me a message,” Sloane said. “It was my boots. From . . .” She gave Matt a pleading look. “You know when. The Dark One is the only person on two planets who could possibly have had them. I don’t know how he brought them here or why, and I don’t know how he survived and jumped into another universe when we supposedly killed him, but that seems to be what happened.” The doubt in Matt’s eyes made her scowl. “You’re the one who says that if you want to know who a person is, look at what they do,” she said. “Nero helped kidnap us and then lied about it. But Mox—the Resurrectionist, I mean—didn’t hurt me, even when he thought I was trying to kill him, and he took me to meet the prophet—”
“Wait,” Esther said. “Hot Praying Mantis is the Resurrectionist?”
“Hot what?” Matt asked.
Esther flapped a dismissive hand at him. “Was he following you or something?”
“Not exactly,” Sloane said. “Nero keeps summoning these Chosen Ones from other universes to fight him. He thought we were just more of the same.”
“You are,” Ziva pointed out.
“Wait,” Matt said. “You said you met a prophet?”
Sloane nodded. “The one who made Genetrix’s doomsday prophecy.”
“While I know from experience that this is a thrilling tale,” Ziva said, “we can’t just stay here waiting for the Army of Flickering. I suggest your friends come with us to a safer location.”
“Somewhere packed with the undead, you mean,” Esther said. “Let me just turn over my brains right now, save you the effort.”
“I don’t give a shit who it’s packed with as long as it’s not a platoon of Flickering soldiers with siphons at the ready!” Ziva said.
“Ziva’s right, we have to go,” Sloane said. “We can go somewhere neutral.” She gave Ziva a pointed look over her shoulder. “Public. Lots of exits.”
“We can’t go until we know what the hell is going on!” Esther said. Sloane hadn’t noticed it before, but Esther looked tired again, despite all the powder and the shine. She remembered Esther telling her as they stared
at Genetrix’s rubble that she was afraid of her mother dying without her. And she believed Nero was the fastest way home.
But she had still gone to his workshop with Sloane to prove that he was lying to them.
“You can if you just . . . decide to trust me,” Sloane said. “I know I don’t deserve it, but I would never do anything to put you in danger. I hope you know that, at least.”
Matt was already lowering his hand. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Okay.”
“Actually,” Ziva said, “we can’t go until we have a look inside the siphon fortis in the Hall of Summons.”
“Why?” Esther said.
“Sloane,” Matt said. “Is that . . .”
Sloane had almost forgotten that she had a piece of the Needle in each palm. When she had lifted the security gate just outside the Dome, it had felt like breathing or blinking. But the Needle had been acid in her hands—a living, buzzing thing that had motives of its own. She could feel them still, muted in Genetrix, but distinct: the Needle wanted to bury itself in her hand again. She pressed it back, tipping one of the pieces so it rolled to her fingertips.
“The Needle was on Earth,” Matt said. “How did you get it here?”
“From the space between the universes.” Sloane frowned down at the sharp sliver in her right hand.
She was about to go on when she noticed the tightening of Matt’s jaw, Esther’s hand going up to her throat, to the siphon she wore. She turned to see two men descending the terrace steps of the Genetrix River Theater, just beyond the small park where the four of them stood.
One of the men was Nero, his mask of mildness finally gone and in its place the cold, focused man Sloane had seen when she left his workshop. His hair was tousled, his cape flung over one shoulder, showing its rich navy lining. His gold Camel pin was askew, and his right arm was outstretched, his hand heavy on the back of the other man’s neck.
The other man, of course, was Mox.
Chosen Ones Page 37