Rogue (23 page)

“So we’re screwed either way,” said Lex. “Gotcha. Is there anything we can do to maximize our chances?”

“Just get to the express elevators in the center. Once you do, the president will freak out and give me clearance to follow you up to her office. Then, I’ll—you know. Get this thing over with.” She sniffed. “Gotta go. Good luck.”

The intercom went silent. The Juniors nervously gulped the rest of their drinks, but Lex had already finished hers. She turned to Uncle Mort. “So . . . how
is
she going to get this thing over with? You said there’s only one thing on earth that can seal a portal. What is it? Duct tape?”

Uncle Mort snickered.

“Come on,” she pressed. “I know it’s something in your bag of tricks, so tell me. You said no more secrets, right?”

He nodded. “No more secrets.”

“Then what is it?”

“I can’t tell you.”

Lex wished she hadn’t chugged her Yorick. It would have looked so nice dripping down the front of Uncle Mort’s hoodie.

“Trust me,” he said, ducking away from her hurled cup. “It’s better that you don’t know. It’s dangerous enough with just the mayors in the loop.”

A rustle of papers sounded. Bang looked up at them, then back at the pages of the Wrong Book for the umpteenth time.

“Fine, Skyla will superglue the portal shut, or whatever,” said Ferbus. “But what are
we
supposed to do once we get up to the president’s office? Sit back and enjoy the view? Again?”

“No. You’ll be providing distraction,” said Uncle Mort. “Warding off the guards and the president while Skyla does her thing, because they’re not going to like it.”

“Punch the president,” Driggs said. “Got it.”

“
Don’t
punch the—” Uncle Mort started, then thought about it. “All right, if worse comes to worst, you have my permission to punch the president.”

Ferbus and Driggs bumped fists through the glass.

“Wait,” Lex said. “How are we supposed to ‘distract’ them?”

“Guns should do the trick,” Uncle Mort said.

“Real guns? Not Amnesia guns? But—”

“What?”
Pip’s face had gone white at whatever it was Bang had just signed to him. He looked at his gaping companions, then back at Bang. “You’d better tell them.”

“It was what you said back at the museum, Mort,” she signed. t,” sgneookedThat the true origin of the Grimsphere is unknown because no one left any artifacts or records. But based on what I’ve been reading, that doesn’t seem right. I don’t think the true history of Grims faded into obscurity just because they were really good at keeping secrets.”

The others exchanged glances. “What do you mean?” said Ferbus. “You think all the Grims who existed before Grotton simply disappeared? Or were killed?”

“No,” she signed. “I don’t think there were any Grims before Grotton at
all
.”

“Okay, nobody panic,” said Uncle Mort. “But Bang appears to have lost her mind.”

“Hear her out!” Pip said. “Or I guess hear me out. Through her. Go ahead, Bang.”

She started signing so fast, even Pip struggled to keep up with translating. “So like I said, Grotton did a lot of experiments, was sort of a mad scientist. But his day job was as a blacksmith. He bragged that he made the sharpest blades in all of merry old England. One day he took out the sharpest one he’d ever made and swooped it around through the air, and—I know this sounds psycho, but he makes it seem as though he
discovered
the ether.”

Ferbus shook his head. “So the guy inadvertently created a scythe? That doesn’t mean he was the first one to do it. Maybe he just joined up with the current Grims after he discovered what he was.”

“That’s what I thought,” Bang continued, “but then he goes on to describe swirling through the ether, freezing time, landing at a target . . .” She paused for a moment to flip over a page. “Everything is here: Killing and Culling, crude versions of vessels, using jellyfish. It even sounds like he opened up the portals himself, constructing these big circular blades or something . . . I can’t get the full picture, since his notes are so dense and hard to get through. But they’re painstaking, and—” She picked through the pages. “I mean, his excitement is
palpable
. He honestly makes it seem like he was discovering all of this for the very first time, like no one had ever done it before. Like he
invented
the Grimsphere.”

Uncle Mort was rubbing his eyes. “You’re right, Bang,” he said. “It does sound psycho.”

She didn’t seem to hear him. “Look, he even trained others—he called them his students. And they called themselves reapers. They operated a lot like a Grimsphere society does today—with more primitive methods, but the idea is the same.” She held up the papers. “I don’t have the rest, obviously, but you can sort of tell where it’s heading—Grotton starts to get it in his head that he can play God, so he does. Experiments with Crashing, Damning, Annihilating . . .”

The Juniors looked to Uncle Mort, but he was shaking his head. “This is all well and good and would make one hell of an HBO miniseries,” he said, “but there’s just one problem: There were a lot of people who lived and died before Grotton came along. And we know they got to the Afterlife somehow—King Tut is proof enough of that. How do you propose they got there?”

“Ask Dora,” Ferbus said. “She was probably around at the time.”

“Go suck an egg!” she shot back.

“Maybe they arrived naturally,” said Lex, thinking. “Without human assistance.”

Uncle Mort had the frustrated look of a person trying to reason with a herd of cats. “Okay. Let’s just assume, for one incredibly ludicrous minute, that all this is true. That before Grotton ‘invented the Grimsphere,’ people just died and automatically went to the Afterlife. Then Grotton arrives and, what, overhauls the entire system? Single-handedly?”

p>

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

Lex was frenetically trying to organize her thoughts. “Wait, maybe it does,” she jumped in. “Think about it. What if people died and went to the Afterlife all by themselves for, like, millennia, but then Grotton tears such a big hole in the fabric of existence that it
breaks
the system. It no longer works the way it’s supposed to, can’t function on its own.” She tried to think of a suitable metaphor. “Like—like—”

“Like when you touch a baby bird,” said Ferbus, “and then the mother bird rejects it and you have to raise it yourself?”

Elysia put her head in her hands.

“Uh, sure,” said Lex. “So the humans intervene, do what they can to keep it going while they figure out how to fix what they broke. But they can’t. The more they tinker with it, the more responsibility they have to take on to ensure that the process of death is running smoothly, on and on, until it depends on Grims entirely!”

Uncle Mort scratched his scar, thinking.

“But what does any of this have to do with anything?” Ferbus said. “So Grotton broke the world, and now it’s our job to maintain it. We raised the frickin’ bird ourselves, and it’s big and strong and has, I don’t know, really majestic feathers. What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal,” Bang signed, “is that our options aren’t as limited as we thought.”

“Exactly!” said Driggs, his eyes animated. “Because if all this is true, it means we
can
permanently fix the Afterlife!”

Lex looked back and forth between the two of them. “How’s that?”

“What harms the Afterlife?” Driggs said. “Human intervention. Even if we seal the portals and reset the Afterlife, Grims still interact with the business of death every day—and like you said, there is always the possibility that someone will commit more violations. Damning or ghosting, or even something as simple as attacking a nontarget, like Lex always tried to do.”

“Thanks for that,” she said.

“So it seems to me,” he continued, “that the only way to ensure that nothing will ever again harm the Afterlife is to get rid of that interaction altogether. If Bang really has read these pages right, and if Lex’s theory turns out to be true, then it’s possible for souls to get to the Afterlife the same way they had for thousands of years before Grotton interfered: naturally, without us Grims acting as middlemen. If you remove Grims from the equation, the Grimsphere ceases to exist, and then there’s no way for anyone to harm the Afterlife anymore.”

Uncle Mort stared at him. He might as well have said that all they needed to do was suck the oceans dry using only crazy straws. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You are proposing that we—and correct me if I’m wrong—somehow dismantle the Grimsphere?”

“Yeah!” said Driggs, his transparent face flushed with excitement. “Although I have no idea how to do it. And it would pretty much destroy our careers and society and everything we hold dear. That would suck.”

But something had resonated with Uncle Mort, because he was making his diabolical-scheming face and running his finger up and down his scar. “It
would
suck. But if that’s what it takes for the Afterlife to last forever . . .” He shook his head. “That’s all assuming that any of this is true, which we can’t confirm until we get Grotton and the Wrong Book back. And even when we do, I certainly am not aware of any ways to—I don’t know,
unGrim
the Grimsphere.”

“Well, we might want to hold that thought anyway,” Elysia said, “because we’re almost at the alhey h top.”

It was as if she’d blared it through a bullhorn, the way it startled everyone out of their brainstorming. They’d been so wrapped up in hypotheticals, they forgot they were in the middle of a manhunt.

“Okay, hang a left when you get out,” Lex said, pointing through the window of the pod. “Those potted trees look like decent hiding places. Duck behind them until all of us are out, then we can break into the apartment on the other side of the hallway.”

As soon as the pod reached the apex of the wheel, a waiter opened the door and wiggled a Yorick coffeepot at them. “Top you folks off?” he asked with a goofy smile, one that dissolved as soon as he caught a good look at their faces.

But Lex was ready with another vial. She pinched it into the guy’s nose, tucked the wad of cash into his pocket, and patted him on the back as they took off. “No, thanks,” she told the waiter. “All pepped up.”

“And ready to punch the president!” Driggs added.

Uncle Mort sighed. “You don’t have to
announce
it.”

There weren’t many other people around the Ferris wheel exit—just a handful of restaurant employees, most of whom were too busy making triple waffle somethings to notice what had happened to their poor coworker. Uncle Mort made a beeline for the trees, and the rest of the group followed him. Lex stayed right on his heels as he rounded the corner, approached the trees—

And staggered back, almost falling to the floor.
“Run!”
he shouted.

Potted trees, as it turned out, didn’t just make good hiding places for fugitives. They did a pretty decent job of concealing a dozen armed guards, too.

***

For some odd reason, Lex focused on the carpet. It was so plush and thick that it perfectly preserved the slashes, divots, and swirls that her friends’ shoes left behind as they ran. The marks spread out before her, green marks crosshatching like grass in a windblown, peaceful field.

But there was nothing peaceful about their current strategy, which involved darting through the halls like panicked rabbits. All previous attempts at secrecy and stealth had gone right out the massive green window as soon as the guards started to chase them. The Juniors were screaming, Uncle Mort was shouting instructions, and Lex’s heart was pounding so loud she was sure that people strolling through the park dozens of stories below could hear it.

“Left!” Uncle Mort was turning around every couple of seconds to shoot Amnesia blow darts at the guards, but as yet he hadn’t been able to penetrate any of their thick black uniforms. “Left again!”

Lex blindly followed his instructions—or at least, her legs did. The rest of her was scrambling, trying to think of a better plan that wouldn’t end with everyone she cared about getting cornered and thrown into the living hell of the Hole.
Think, think—

“No!” she shouted in a moment of clarity, the schematics of the building reappearing in her mind’s eye. She raised her voice so that even Ferbus could hear her, all the way up in the front. “To the right!”

It would be a long shot, but it could work.

She pumped her legs—regretting, yet again, that solid ball of spaghetti she’d consumed the night before—and overtook Ferbus at the head of the pack. “This way!”

It was only a few doors away now. The guards were falling behind. They were going to make it.

Lex fell upon the door and pounded it with everything she had. The others slammed into it as well, making such a ruckus that those within couldn’t possibly ignore them.

And they didn’t. There was a peephole next to Lex’s nose, and although she couldn’t see through it on her end,it at t she could tell by the shadow under the door that someone inside was looking out. “What do you want?” a muffled voice demanded.

“Let us in!” she yelled. “Please! Hurry!”

The door opened.

Lex dropped to the floor, nearly trampled by her friends as they rushed in behind her. She looked up and counted the running bodies—four, five, six—

“That’s it,” Uncle Mort said, shutting the door. A second later, Driggs came whooshing in.

Lex looked up. The Juniors’ dorm had appeared large in the schematics, but in person, it was even bigger. The common room was decked out with a wide-screen television, all sorts of electronics, and really expensive-looking modern furniture. It looked nothing at all like the dingy digs of the Crypt back in Croak. This place was a palace.

But the furniture wasn’t what was staring them down, waiting for them to speak. Arms crossed and eyes hard, the thirty or so Necropolitan Juniors resembled a miniature army; given the fact that some of them might be future guards, this wasn’t surprising.

“Say something,” Pandora said, prodding Lex. “This was your cockamamie plan in the first place.”