by Neil Gaiman
“I’ll still die,” he whispered.
“And so will I, and so will Hue. But everyone else will live, and that’s more important than anything.” He hesitated again, and I took a breath, grasping at straws.
“You have the memories of a hundred different Walkers, Joaquim—you said that once. Right?”
He nodded.
“You have the memories of their deaths, right?”
He hesitated again. “Some of them . . .”
“Can you honestly tell me that none of them went into this knowing and accepting that they might die?”
He flinched. Some of the lights within him grew dimmer, others brighter. “They were so afraid . . .” he whispered.
“Of course they were afraid. I’m afraid. I don’t want to die,” I admitted, feeling my stomach tighten into a knot with the truth of it. “But if it’s the only way to save everything, I will. You know I will. Come on. You and me, Joaquim. The saviors of the Multiverse.”
He snapped his head up, looking into my eyes, then at my hand. He moved, translucent and shimmering and glowing with the memories of a hundred lives. He took my hand.
“I, Joseph Harker,” I said. He looked at me.
“I . . . Joaquim . . .” Here he stopped, and I realized he didn’t have a last name.
“Harker,” I said. “You’re one of us.”
“I . . . Joaquim Harker,” he whispered, and I took his other hand.
“Understanding that there must be balance in all things . . .”
His voice joined mine, and we said the oath together, as the walls of FrostNight whipped and whirled around us. I could feel it constricting with me inside, felt it closing around the edges of my consciousness. I was afraid, but also calm. Peaceful. I could do this. I could save everyone. I could put Joaquim to rest, and all the souls that were part of him.
I hadn’t been able to save my family, but I could save everyone else’s.
Mom, Dad, Jenny, Kevin . . . I love you.
I felt my mind becoming one with FrostNight. It was chaotic and perfect, the answer on the edge of everything, the truth just out of reach. It was the precipice of all and nothing.
I felt my body break into pieces, my consciousness ceasing to need it as a vessel. FrostNight was my vessel now, and it was all I would ever be.
I was aware of everything outside myself, of the battle still raging. I found the threads of time connecting Avery and Acacia, and all the little stars that were my fellow Walkers. I gathered them all up like the strings of a hundred balloons, releasing them into the sky and sending them off toward InterWorld. Toward freedom.
I found the blight that was HEX, the virus that was Binary. They existed in the Multiverse like rot in wood, like decay on death. Necessary, in moderation. I had the power to destroy them. I did not.
I felt Joaquim react within my consciousness, and I felt him understand. I felt him join me as I began the process of deconstructing us, of pulling FrostNight apart piece by piece.
Then, like a ship with its tether cut, I felt a jarring sense of dislocation. I was floating, adrift, and then I knew no more.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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I UNDERSTAND NOW, JOEY. You didn’t ask anything of me you weren’t willing to give yourself. You truly would have died for everyone.
That was enough.
“Joaquim?”
“He’s awake,” someone said. It was a man’s voice, one I didn’t recognize.
I fought to open my eyes, but as before, my vision was off. All I could see were vague shapes, blurred and distorted, like looking into a funhouse mirror. My face felt strange, and all the little aches and pains I’d been suffering for the past however long (it felt like forever) were back. They were really back. I groaned.
“Hey, you,” another voice said, accompanied by a slight dip in whatever surface I was resting on as someone sat down on it. This voice, I recognized.
I turned my head toward her, managing to make out the faint shape of her head. I both heard and felt the crinkle of bandages around my head, covering my left eye.
Covering my eye. I remembered Lord Dogknife’s claws, the ripping pain and the intense burning, the blood falling to the perfect white floor. Was my eye . . . ? “Acacia,” I mumbled. “Where’s Joaquim?”
I felt her take my hand. “Joaquim died a long time ago, Joe. Remember? When FrostNight was first—”
“He is FrostNight,” I insisted. “He’s the consciousness of FrostNight. . . .”
Her hand squeezed mine. “Okay,” she said, and it sounded like she understood. After a moment, she spoke again. I could barely make out the sadness in her expression as she did. “Then you mean ‘was,’ Joe. FrostNight is gone.”
I took a breath, held it, let it out slowly. More of my vision cleared, enough that I could see her sitting next to me.
She looked like she’d been through hell. Her dark hair was tied back into a ponytail, and she was wearing an oversized sweatshirt that was so thin and worn it had to have belonged to someone else first. The faded words said Alpha-Cen Med School. It looked comfortable. The sleeves were rolled up, revealing some of her injuries.
There were a dozen little cuts and bruises up and down both arms, half-healed ones from when she’d come crashing onto InterWorld and new ones from her fight with Lord Dogknife and Lady Indigo. Her eyes were red, like she’d been crying.
My face itched. I reached up with my free hand to rub at it, watching her expression go from relieved to concerned as she watched me. “You shouldn’t touch it for a while,” she said. “While it heals.”
My fingers encountered the soft gauze and bandages, and she offered me a faint smile, hand tightening around mine.
“Will it heal?” I asked. I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.
“We did what we could, but the HEX hound’s claws were vicious,” the unfamiliar voice from before said, and I looked up to see a tall man with dark hair and a neatly trimmed goatee standing by my bed.
“Dad’s the best healer we’ve got,” Acacia said earnestly. “He really did the best he could, Joe.”
Dad?
I blinked up at the tall man, who was looking at his daughter with sympathy. There might have been a resemblance, but it was hard to tell with the facial hair. “I’m sure he did,” I mumbled reassuringly to Acacia. They’d done all they could. Did that mean they hadn’t been able to fix it? Had I lost my eye?
That would be ironic. The thought came unbidden to my mind, and I bit down on the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. It seemed to be a nervous habit of mine, and one I should probably try to break.
“What happened?” I asked instead.
“We were all fighting,” Acacia said slowly. “And then you . . . ran into FrostNight.” She glared at me. “Which was stupid, and reckless . . .”
“Just tell me what happened.”
She glared for another moment, then continued. “I felt you gather us all up, but . . . I also felt FrostNight constrict. It fell in on itself, and I went back to find you. You were lying there, in the middle of the star.”
“He saved me,” I murmured. She just looked at me. “We were going to destroy FrostNight together. He must have pushed me out at the last minute.”
She hesitated, then squeezed my hand again. “That makes sense.”
I actually did laugh this time, but bitterly. “How does any of this make sense?”
Acacia glanced up at her father, then looked back to me. “Well . . . Binary are, of course, machines. They don’t understand things like souls and free will, so they wouldn’t have thought that Joaquim could do anything other than fulfill his directive. HEX does understand how souls work, but they believe themselves to have ultimate power over them . . . so they, also, could not have predicted Joaquim’s capacity for free will. You’re the one who showed him that, Joe. You showed him he had a c
hoice, and by choosing to die”—her gaze got a bit more intense; I think she didn’t entirely approve of that decision—“you showed him that he, also, had a choice. And he chose to save you.”
I was surprised at how little I felt. I supposed I was probably in shock. I had expected to die, and in the end, Joaquim had saved me like I hadn’t been able to save him. I remained silent, thinking, remembering those last moments. Finally, I found another question.
“Where’s Hue?”
“Well,” Acacia’s father said, “that’s the other thing. The MDLF seems to have taken up permanent residence inside your body, and we have been unable to extract him.”
“Extract . . . ?”
“When you were expelled from FrostNight, you were one. It seems you still are, and I am not certain it can be undone. Beyond that, I believe he is helping to heal your eye.”
I frowned, then immediately winced as the expression pulled at the skin around my eyes. Hue was bound with me? And was helping to heal my eye? He’d never shown any kind of healing ability before. And he’d taken up permanent residence inside my body?
Hue? I thought, but got no response. I was aware of him now that I concentrated, dimly, but . . .
To distract myself, I looked around.
I was obviously in an infirmary, but an unfamiliar one. There were some machines I recognized and others I didn’t at all, and the overall color scheme was odd for an infirmary. Instead of the stark white I was used to, there were mahogany wood cabinets, pinkish marble floors, beige walls. Despite my not recognizing the room, something about it was naggingly familiar.
“Where am I?” I asked.
“TimeWatch,” Acacia said. “Sick bay.”
That would explain the familiar colors. I’d been to TimeWatch once before, when Acacia had taken me captive. . . .
“I’m not a prisoner, am I?”
She at least had the grace to look vaguely embarrassed at the reminder. “No,” she said pointedly, setting her shoulders and lifting her chin. “And you weren’t a prisoner before, I was just trying to—”
“I’m teasing you,” I interrupted. “Settle down. Where is everyone else?” I asked, suddenly worried for my friends. I remembered sending them all off to InterWorld, but . . . “Are they okay?”
“They’re here,” she reassured me, nodding. “They’re all down at the docks. We’re getting your ship fixed up,” she added with a smile.
“My ship . . . ?”
“InterWorld,” she clarified. “Duh.”
“You really just said duh.”
“Yeah, I did. I’m a Time Agent, I can use whatever slang I want.”
“I’m glad to see you feeling better, young man,” her father interrupted, and we both quieted. “But I do have other patients to attend to. You are free to go, with escort, and the bracelet on your wrist can be used to call for medical aid if you need it.”
“Thanks, Daddy,” Acacia said, and he smoothed her hair back affectionately as he went by. My heart ached.
“Thank you,” I managed. I waited until he was gone, then lowered my voice. “Is that really your father?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling. “And my mother is currently on deck, and Avery is really my brother.” I was going to ask her what “on deck” meant, but her smile faded and she glanced off toward another of the hospital beds. I followed her gaze, noting the sheathed sword leaning up against the wall near the headboard. I couldn’t see who occupied the bed, but by the sword, I assumed it to be Avery.
“Is he okay?” I asked. She bit her lip, forehead wrinkling as her eyes watered.
“Probably,” she said, her voice tight. “Dad’s taking really good care of him. I’m just . . . we lose people all the time.”
“I know how that is,” I said.
“I know you do.” She took my hand again.
“Is he your only sibling?” I asked after a moment. I was genuinely curious; I had wondered, once, if TimeWatch was an organization made up of Acacias like InterWorld was made up of Joeys, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
“No,” she said, looking a little happier. “I have an older sister and a younger one. And a ton of aunts and uncles and cousins.”
“So, TimeWatch is basically . . . just your whole family?”
“It’s a few different families. Mine, and a couple of others. They aren’t exactly my cousins. . . . It’s hard to explain. Suffice to say you aren’t the only one with other versions of you running around.”
“Oh, no.” I said. When she looked at me quizzically, I squinched my face carefully into an expression of distaste. “There’s more than one of you?”
“You’re a jerk,” she told me.
“Am not,” I said. “I’ve just had a bad . . . everything.” The truth of it hit me and I looked away, recalling how much I’d been through and how much I still had to grieve for. “Acacia . . . when you found your way back to InterWorld and Avery said you were out of sync with our timestream, or whatever . . . When you told me my world was in FrostNight’s path . . .” I started. She hung her head. “You said you’d try to help,” I continued, tilting my head to try to look into her eyes. “You said TimeWatch would help, and you didn’t—”
“We did,” she said sharply, lifting her head again. “My aunt died there. She did everything she could.”
I felt a little better knowing they’d tried, and also felt bad that she’d lost someone there, too—was that what I’d seen in all the chaos, when I thought there had been a woman there with the Old Man?—but I was still upset that whatever they’d done hadn’t helped. “It was still destroyed. I’m sorry you lost your aunt, but what did she do, exactly?”
“She reversed it,” Acacia snapped, trying to pull her hand from mine. I let her, trying to keep my expression calm, to reassure her I just wanted answers. “She couldn’t actually stop FrostNight from wiping the world clean, but she created a custom timestream for it. It’ll run parallel to the anchor, now.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means it was restarted rather than destroyed, and it’ll progress faster than others of its timestream would as compared to a fixed point.”
“The anchor.”
“Yes.”
“And what’s the anchor?”
“You,” she said, meeting my gaze.
I took a moment to let that sink in. “Me?”
“Yes.”
“So . . . my planet was restarted.”
“Yes. And things should progress on it, barring outside interference—which we will work to ensure—exactly as they did previously.”
I sat there in silence, digesting this. My world was not dead, but technically, my family still was. Technically, everything was . . . but it wouldn’t always be. Things would live again. My family would live again, someday.
It wasn’t much comfort, really, but it was something.
“I’m sorry about your aunt,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “I’ll miss her. I wish you could have met her. She knew Captain Harker.”
“Really,” I asked, but it wasn’t a question.
“Mhm,” she said. I felt like a couple of different mysteries were on the verge of being solved, here, but I was too tired to examine them closely. All I knew was that I was here, and relatively safe, and InterWorld was here, too. Joaquim had come through in the end, saving me and sacrificing himself. HEX and Binary were crippled for a while, at least, and we were getting a boost in technology from TimeWatch.
None of that made up for how many lives had been lost. But then, nothing ever would.
“Mom wanted to talk to you when you were up for it,” Acacia said.
“I’m up for it,” I told her. Honestly, I had some questions of my own.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I feel like I’ve been in bed for days.”
“Two days,” she said. “To be exact.”
I pushed the covers back, moving my legs carefully over the side of the bed. I was
wearing clothing I didn’t recognize, but it was comfortable and clean, which was a big plus. “Yeah, I’m definitely ready to get up.”
“I don’t know if you should yet, Joe.”
“Your father said I’m free to move around,” I said.
“With an escort,” she reminded me, giving another smile. “I guess it’s my turn to play tour guide, huh?”
“Sure is,” I said. “Just warn me in advance if you’re going to do any abrupt time-warping, okay?”
“I’ll do my best,” she said, helping me stand. “Where to?” she asked, once I’d found my balance.
“The docks,” I said. “I want to see my ship.”
The docks of TimeWatch were a lot like I’d have expected; half a dozen long wooden walkways extending off into the distance, with various types of ships from all different cultures and time periods docked at them. It was odd to see InterWorld (which was big enough to house more than five hundred people) tied to someone else’s dock like some little dinghy. It was huge, easily one of the largest ships there, and it was still dwarfed by the sheer scale of TimeWatch.
Acacia and I stood on a platform overlooking everything. Beneath the docks was an ocean of something other than water; it looked more like a nebula, with swirls of deep blue and green and white, and sparkles of little stars like sea foam. The sky was that beautiful amalgamation of colors and galaxies I’d seen when I’d first been to TimeWatch.
It was like there were a million skies all mashed up into one, the sun rising and setting multiple times in minutes, in a hundred different places. There were moons and stars and clouds and fog, all sharing the same sky. It had been beautiful before, when I’d been a prisoner uncertain of my fate. Now, standing here overlooking all of it as a guest assured of his safety, it was breathtaking.
My ship was all lit up, warm and inviting like lights seen through the windows of a familiar house. She sat amid the waves of stars, making little ripples as people moved off and on, carrying supplies and machinery. Some of those people were obviously my friends, the Walkers who’d made it out of the fight unscathed, and others must have been the other TimeWatch families Acacia had mentioned. It was refreshing to see so many people who weren’t me.