by Neil Gaiman
The little blue lights arced from my fingers like stars, like fireworks, flying toward Acacia. Each of them touched a clone, and one by one, they were zapped into nothing. I didn’t stop to watch any further. They would do as I asked, I was sure of it. I turned back to Joaquim and the machine, stretching out my other hand. The blue lights hesitated. Help him, I directed, but they faltered.
“Joe!” Acacia was beside me now, one hand clutching my wrist. “You can’t save him, we have to Walk—”
“You told me to help him!” I shrugged her off, taking a few steps toward the machines. Joaquim was looking at me, eyes wide and frightened, his free hand reaching out, desperately trying to close the distance between us.
“To get you out of the machine, to take his power back—”
Anger flared suddenly, deep in my chest. She’d told me to help him only to use him? No—we were better than that. We had to be. I had to be.
I stumbled away from her, moving toward Joaquim and the machine. One step closer, two—three—
“You can’t!” She threw her arms around my neck, using her weight to slow me. I faltered as she pressed against my fractured shoulder, still not healed from the rockslide Joaquim had caused. Electricity was crackling in the air all around us, the power undulating, vibrating back and forth, bouncing all around the room. The thirteen figures stood untouched around the circuitry star, arms at their sides, the chanting once again in a language even I, with all my InterWorld training, couldn’t understand. Whatever they were doing, they didn’t seem concerned with us; the little blue lights were winking out, one by one. I couldn’t tell if they were being freed or dying.
“It’s almost complete,” Acacia pleaded into my ear, her broken nails digging into my shoulder and chest. “You’re powering it, you and him, right now—”
“Then we should get him out—”
“You can’t, Joe, it’s too late! He doesn’t have his own essence—he’s a consciousness powered by dead things and they’ve left him—”
“He’s a consciousness,” I yelled back, ripping away from her. I took two steps toward Joaquim, before I stopped in my tracks. All around me, the wind was whipping and the fires were burning and the clones were being zapped to ashes by a hundred pieces of my soul, and through it all Joaquim was still reaching, still holding his hand out—but there was nothing there. There was nothing in his eyes anymore, not anger or hatred or fear. He wasn’t looking at me, not really. He was looking through me. He was holding his hand out to the lights.
Acacia’s hand slipped into mine. I couldn’t look away from that face, my face, with the dead eyes.
“Walk, Joe,” Acacia whispered, and somehow I heard her, even over the chaos surrounding us.
I swallowed, closing my eyes. I’m sorry, I thought at the lights, as I’d told the memories of their successors on the Wall, so many years in the future. I’m so sorry.
I took a breath, finding the gate in my mind. It opened, and I followed the path that was home, leaving the dead Walkers and the empty one behind.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
OF THE DOZEN OR so prehistoric planets where InterWorld made its home, my favorite was still the first one I’d ever come to. I know it sounds odd to say, but it felt a little bit like my home—it was familiar, even though the landmarks in each world looked almost identical. Still, I don’t care if it was just my imagination, just nostalgia for the first world I’d come to after I’d left mine. The sunsets always seemed rosier, the sunrises brighter, the sky bluer. Today was no exception as Acacia and I stood on a cliff overlooking a great valley, so close our clothing touched with every breeze. The valley was beautiful; the world around us was calm; the sun was setting.
We’d been standing there in silence for a few minutes, waiting for InterWorld to pick us up. There were tears on my face, and I didn’t even care if she saw them.
“I know you wanted to save him,” she said, not looking at me. “I’m sorry, Joe, I really am.”
“What was that thing?”
“…I don’t know.”
“You looked like you knew.”
“I…” She looked away, which was impressive since she still hadn’t been looking at me in the first place. “I don’t know what it was, exactly. I know it was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever felt. It felt like it…could just erase me. And I can cast anchor to any time and place in the Altiverse, Joe. I can run as fast and as far as I need to.” She paused for a moment, and her voice was very small when she spoke again. “I don’t think I could run from that.”
“He called it FrostNight,” I said after a moment, watching a flock of birds skim along the surface of a small lake in the distance. “I was warned about it once before.”
She shook her head. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Was it completed?” I asked, afraid of the answer. “You said we were powering it. Did they…?”
“I don’t know,” she said again. “I don’t…think so.”
“We have to figure out what it does.”
“We can go back to TimeWatch, search the archives—”
“No,” I interrupted, turning my gaze to the sky. “We’re going to report first.” She was silent for another moment.
“I don’t report to InterWorld, Joe.” She sounded apologetic. I turned to face her, looking down into her eyes. I was just glad to see someone looking back at me.
“Doesn’t mean you can’t, Cay.” Her brow furrowed slightly, but she allowed the nickname, obviously considering this. “You were there, too. You saw everything happen. I’m…” Now I had to look away, swallowing hard against the sudden hopelessness that settled in the pit of my stomach. “I’m liable to get thrown out again if it’s just me coming back with another crazy story. I’ve seen the deaths of two Walkers—three, if you count Joaquim. Hundreds more, if you count all those souls. I’ve seen the end of InterWorld, thanks to you.” She drew in a breath, shifting slightly, but I kept on. “I signed out to go for a Walk, and accidentally brought on the thing I was warned about when I first arrived here, something that even scares a Time Agent and took the essences of a hundred of me to power. Just come report with me, okay?”
She was looking up at me, a maddening little smile starting to turn up the corners of her mouth. “So you’re asking for my help.”
“It’s the least you can do for betraying me.”
She paused. “Joe…”
“You were just trying to help me, I know.”
“No, I was trying to save you. There was a massive power flux in InterWorld Prime that was—I know now—because of Joaquim. I didn’t know who the traitor was, but I was going to have to bring the information that there was one to Captain Harker, and he was just as likely to suspect you as anyone. More so. That is even if he was able to do anything about it, and with the massive amount of power being channeled from them, I didn’t think so.”
“Joaquim had his memories,” I said quietly, taking her hands. She let me, nodding. “It’s because he was stealing them, right? Taking their power, like the machine tried to do to me?” She nodded again. “So they might all be—” The image of the InterWorld of the future flashed through my mind, abandoned and wrecked….
“No, they’re stable. I promise; they’re all okay. They’re just…I don’t know that they’re coming, Joe.”
“Why not?”
“If you were Captain Harker, and you had a traitor on your ship slowly siphoning the energy from everyone on it, what would you do?”
“Find the traitor.”
“What if he was gone by the time you found him? What if he’d taken what he needed and gotten away with it?”
“I’d try to break the link. I don’t—” But then I did understand, all at once. I’d try to break the link. I’d throw the ship out of time, as quickly as possible, and get as far away from the receiver as possible. I’d punch it. And God help anyone left behind.
“They’re not coming,” I said. My voice sounded strange in my own ears.
“I�
��m sorry, Joe.”
I kept silent, just standing there, holding her hands. There wasn’t anything I could say.
{IW}:=Ω/∞
had brought me home, but home was beyond my reach.
“Come to TimeWatch with me,” she said, giving a light squeeze of my hands that brought my gaze back to her, however unwillingly. “As a guest. As a friend.”
I stared at her for a moment, reading the earnest hope on her face, the desire to make me understand. “No cells?”
She smiled, brilliantly. “No cells. No holding fields, no Sentry.”
“Oh, is that what they’re called? The hulking men in the suits that look like secret service on steroids?”
She laughed, eyes sparkling. “The Sentry. He’s our main guard.”
“Your main guard? For all of TimeWatch?”
“He has more than one form.”
“Do any of them speak with their mouths, or is that part of the intimidation factor?”
She laughed again. The idea of going with her was becoming more and more appealing.
She looked up at me and I looked down at her, and we were both smiling. “I like you better when you don’t have to have the last word all the time,” I told her, and she didn’t even blink.
“I like you better when you aren’t trying to impress me.”
“Nah, I gave up on that when you stood up to the Old Man.”
“He’s not that scary.”
I thought of the picture in the Old Man’s desk, of him and the older her, of the way they’d been smiling. I wondered if she was going to be his someday, or if she already had been. I wondered if this technically counted as making moves on my boss’s girl, but it was mattering less and less because she was tilting her face up toward me and our arms were around each other now, and I didn’t know if I’d ever see the Old Man or InterWorld again.
I shouldn’t have been surprised when something huge blocked out the sun right then, right when our faces were so close I could feel her breath. I shouldn’t have been surprised when the ship blinked into existence right above us, but I was, and I was further surprised when I looked up and it wasn’t InterWorld.
It was worse than the Malefic and that horrible FrostNight machine combined. It was bigger and darker than anything I’d ever seen, surrounded by a halo—no, a miasma—of tiny particles like Saturn’s rings, except they were swirling and pivoting like a cloud of wasps around a disturbed nest. Worst of all, it was completely silent, like an animal stalking its prey.
I pulled Acacia back beneath a tree as the particles shifted and swirled, still absolutely silent, streams of them shooting out in all directions. In less than a minute they’d completely blanketed the sky, like storm clouds in winter.
We were afraid to even whisper, afraid to breathe. The miasma grew denser and denser, until it was as dark as a moonless night, and the sky churned and roiled like a thing alive.
Then, high up and slightly to the side of us, there was an outline of something, a flicker, a shadow—then it was gone, and back, and gone again, but I’d seen the shape of it and it was one I knew as well as my own heart.
The black ship began to flicker as well, out of time with the other shape, and the particles were swirling faster and faster in the sky, shifting and whirling and writhing, twisting around the other. Slowly, they began to flicker in tandem.
HEX had found InterWorld—and something else had found us.
I whirled, my arms still wrapped around Acacia—but I couldn’t protect her from the air, the miasma that permeated this entire area. I wasn’t even sure what had struck her, but she gasped and went limp in my arms. I tried to hold on to her, as I had when we’d been separated by Binary, but something lashed out and hit me in my injured side. I doubled over; the only way I could save myself from a broken rib was to roll with it. The darkness grew thicker, more pronounced, and I lost sight of Acacia.
Shadows swept up in front of me, coalescing, forming strong hands that grabbed me by the throat. I felt my feet leave the ground as the darkness continued to take shape, forming into a figure from my nightmares.
Lord Dogknife.
“We meet again, pup.” He smiled, the expression not at all pleasant. I didn’t bother trying to break his grip; he was too strong for that. Instead, I snaked a hand down to my belt, going for my shield disk. I didn’t know how much charge it had left or what it would do about his hand on my throat, if anything, but it was the best option I had right then.
He let go with one hand, claws grabbing my wrist before I could make it to the shield. His grip was hard, but what worried me more was the way his fur felt against my skin. It was warm and sticky, matted with a viscous substance I desperately hoped wasn’t blood. I still couldn’t see Acacia. I looked up, unable to do anything else, looked to the faint outline of my home as it flitted through the sky.
“Your ship isn’t coming for you, child.” His red eyes were wide, ears perked up with excitement. The expression closely mirrored a dog’s in a way that was entirely unfunny; a sick parody of something usually comforting and familiar. “Poor little pup, abandoned by his pack…They couldn’t come get you, even if they wanted to.”
Finally, finally, I saw movement behind him. Acacia was struggling to her feet, using the wide tree trunk behind her as leverage. In one hand was the little beeper thingy she’d used to fire at J/O. She raised it and aimed—
Lord Dogknife whirled around, letting go of my throat. He lashed a hand out, smacking the weapon out of her hand and knocking her to the ground. I caught a glimpse of her face as she fell; her nose was bleeding, eyes shutting tightly in pain.
He’d let go of me—that was something. I put all my weight on one leg, using his grip on my wrist as leverage, and sent my heel toward his face. He caught my ankle and pulled, slamming me back onto the ground. Sharp teeth glinting in a fierce, canine grin, he twisted my wrist in his strong grip. I felt something snap, and it took me a moment to realize the hoarse shout of pain had come from me.
“Your ship is stranded out of time, Walker,” he whispered, his voice somewhere between a growl and a purr. “You are the last one left, and you should be commended. It was you who made all this possible.”
I didn’t know if he was just saying that to get a rise out of me, or if he really was evil to a cliché—I didn’t care, at this point. I couldn’t feel my fingers, and Acacia wasn’t moving anymore. I wasn’t sure if it was just the pain from my broken wrist making me dizzy, or if she was actually starting to glow. Certainly everything was looking a little fuzzy.
I tried to wriggle a leg up between us so I could kick him off me, start fighting again, but he was way too strong. His breath was rancid in my face, the sickeningly sweet smell of rotting meat.
“It was you who destroyed my ship, little Walker. And in doing so, showed me how to defeat you. We are even now, yes? I could kill you, little fly, but I have something far better in mind.”
A small, tiny, faint glimmer of hope began to make itself known in my gut. If he wasn’t going to kill me, whatever it was, I could get out of it. If he wanted to boil me down to my essence and try to capture my soul, I’d escaped from that before. I could handle that.
“Your death would be a kindness—you have already failed. You can Walk, but where will you go? You cannot return to your ship, and the few precious moments you have left will not be enough to stop us. FrostNight comes, little Walker. You have already seen it.”
Something about the ground beneath me started to feel odd, like it was becoming softer—or I was sinking. I took my gaze away from his face long enough to glance down at the grass beneath me, and my eyes went wide.
It was wilting. As I watched, it turned brown and brittle, dying right beneath me. The smell of rotting debris was all around me, and I could hear insects buzzing around my eyes, could see flies dropping from the sky as they, too, died.
“The power that will reshape everything.” His voice was echoing in my ears, everything around me sounding hollow.
“FrostNight. The Ragnarok Wave. Our Silver Dream.”
Darkness was creeping into the edges of my vision. At first I thought I was passing out, then I realized the ground was actually turning black.
“You will be alive to see it, little Walker. And you will not be able to Walk far enough away.”
The ground gave way beneath me, and as I felt myself starting to fall, I saw Acacia’s body glowing bright green. She shimmered and vanished, and I fell into the Nowhere-at-All.
EPILOGUE
I WAS THERE ONLY for a few moments, but it felt like forever. The Nowhere-at-All was as disorienting as the In-Between in its own way. Instead of everything, there was absolutely nothing. No sound, no light, no air—at least not at first. After you’d been there for a few seconds, you realized you weren’t alone, that there were things in the darkness that knew exactly where you were.
The one time I’d been there before, I’d managed to will myself where I needed to be. I tried to focus enough to do that now, but I was in too much pain—too tired, too worried, too scared. And too lost. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew it couldn’t be to InterWorld. I couldn’t get home.
Just as I was wondering if Lord Dogknife’s plan had been to trap me in the Nowhere-at-All forever—an admittedly terrifying thought—I saw a small dot in the distance. It grew as I felt toward it, becoming so bright I had to close my eyes. As soon as I did, it was as though I suddenly gained both weight and mass, and was free-falling to my death. I had time for about two seconds of abject panic before I hit the ground.
Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt—not much, anyway. Though it felt like I’d been falling forever, I’d hit the ground from maybe two, three feet up.
Yes, the ground. It smelled like dirt and grass, and when I opened my eyes, that’s exactly what was beneath me.
I groaned, rolling over onto my side. My wrist hurt like nothing else I’d ever experienced—even my fractured shoulder during the avalanche—and I was sure that one of my ribs was actually broken this time. I was alone…back on the world I’d just come from? No…I could hear something in the distance, a familiar sound. Ships?