The Realms of the Dead (13 page)

The transformation occurred in her eyes first. The watery blue darkened into a deep chestnut brown and the glaze of insanity disappeared completely. Chuck tried to reach for her, to whisper Lydia's name and smile, but his efforts ended with him crashing to the floor as his quivering legs gave out once again. When he mustered the strength to raise his head again, the scarred and beaten woman was gone. Light radiated from her pores and a serene smile touched her face as she gazed down upon him.

Chuck couldn't blame her when she ran. In fact, it was exactly what he wanted. As long as she was safe—as long as she never had to endure pain, fear, or desolation again—he was happy. He'd gladly take her place in this realm. Albert Lewis could have his way, could spend hours dreaming up new ways to punish him for his continued obstinateness, and it wouldn't matter. Lydia was free…

“See how she deserts you in your time of need?” Lewis had returned to his throne again, draping one leg over the arm as he lounged. On the surface, he appeared unconcerned that Lydia had somehow managed to break free fom his grasp. His furrowed brow and a tremor in his voice, however, betrayed this façade. “That is what you came back for? A selfish little tramp who thinks only of herself?”

Your words can't hurt me, you son of a bitch.

“Perhaps not. But my flesh puppets certainly will.”

Chuck was certain he'd only thought the words and not spoken them aloud. Which meant this world was tightening its grip upon him and weaving his very thoughts into the fabric of its reality. Soon his memories would be gone. Everything that made him the person he was would be absorbed by the Cutscene, reinforcing the walls, mountains, and atmosphere. Rather than watching Lewis's
flesh puppets
close in, Chuck fixed an image of Lydia in his mind, determined to hold on to her memory for as long as he could.

From somewhere in the darkness, a sound built. At first it was nothing more than bursts of whispers, but it quickly grew into an unbroken sigh. Lewis turned his head toward the sound with a frown and the flesh puppets followed suit, their necks craning
simultaneously.
With heads cocked to the side, they listened.

“What trick is this, boy? What are you doing?”

Chuck thought he detected hesitation in Lewis's voice, an uncertainty bred from something within his realm that he didn't personally control. Peering at the old man, Chuck's suspicions were confirmed. Wrinkles pulled the executed killer's brow toward his cheeks, narrowing his eyes with disbelieving scrutiny. His gaze darted from the source of the noise, to Chuck, and then back to the sound again.

“Kill him,” he said. “Kill him now.”

The flesh puppets jerked and twitched, their arms extending toward Chuck as if in compliance, only to pull back again. Traces of emotion flittered across their faces and their eyes shifted between their natural colors and Albert Lewis's blue.

“Stop it!” Lewis's command echoed through the chamber as he leapt out of his throne; the old man paced back and forth, pulling out strands of his own hair by the handful. To Chuck it appeared as if the man wasn't aware of this tame form of self-mutilation, as if it was as much as a nervous tic as a twitching mouth. “I don't know what you're doing, but
stop it
!”

What had once sounded like a sigh was now a mighty wind, blowing through the passageways. Chuck had the impression of something rushing through the darkened corridors, something targeting this particular chamber. Something that continued to grow in volume.

“I don't know what you're doing, boy, but stop it
now
!”

Chuck couldn't have if he'd wanted to. This wasn't some Whisk technique he'd culled from the handbook. His own eyes stared into the darkness as well as he held his breath, waiting to see what had shaken the haughtiness from the megalomaniac.

They shot out of the gloom like an aggressive cloud, wings whirring in the air, millions of fuzzy bodies darting and swooping, each one with a single dot of yellow blood rising from where a needle had pinned it to the wall. The swarm blotted out the ceiling overhead, so thick and dense that a solid shadow moved across the floor as more moths streamed into the collective.

Not content to simply flutter in the air, the insects dove toward the throne, their bodies maneuvering into a shape that looked like a massive spear hurling through the air. Lewis threw up his hands and scrambled away, but it was too late. The first of the moths batted against his skin, their wings frantically beating against his face. He tried to swat them away and, failing that, to at least brush them off his body, but even more had joined the fray. As soon as he'd dispatched one, four more appeared to take its place. Within moments Lewis was covered from head to toe. He twirled in circles, his screams muffled by the moths carpeting his body, arms pinwheeling as he tripped over his own feet and toppled from the riser.

Each moth ripped away a tiny piece of Albert Lewis's flesh as they thronged over him. Bit by bit, they deconstructed the form he'd taken, flying into the ether with nuggets of bloody tissue in tow. From Chuck's perspective, it seemed as though the vaguely human shape beneath the moths was shrinking, growing smaller and thinner each time a new moth wriggled into the hole left by a departing one and claimed its own prize.

By the time the last moth disappeared, nothing was left where Albert Lewis had once stood, and his screams had fallen silent. There were no bones or dust, not so much as a greasy stain on the cobbles to mark his passing.

With its master vanquished, the Cutscene began collapsing upon itself. The castle rumbled and shook as timbers collapsed, raining down stone and dust that dissipated into nothingness before it even had a chance to strike the floor. One wall disappeared completely, and Chuck saw mountains melting against the horizon as the boundaries of the world blackened and curled like a burning photograph. The fissures cracking the earth widened and chunks of dirt and rock crumbled away while lightning flashed like dying neon.

It was all coming to an end. Lewis's reign of terror was over, and even though Chuck knew he'd be trapped within void space for all eternity, relief washed over him, chasing away the aches and fatigue. He continued watching the Cutscene dissolve through eyes blurred with tears, a smile spreading across his face as he threw back his head and laughed. No one would ever have to suffer by Lewis's hand again. It was truly and really over.

Lydia bolted from the shadows and ran to him, the floor shattering and breaking away at her heels. She practically slid on her knees to his side and cradled his head in her lap as her eyes twinkled down at him.

There was nothing for either one of them to say. Chuck knew she'd removed the pins from the moths. Just as he knew that she only still remained in this disintegrating realm because of him.

The rest of the chamber was entirely gone, and the pair were huddled together on a precarious column of earth that descended into the fiery lake miles below. Chuck forced his arm to reach for her, his fingers stretching to touch her face, and their auras merged into each other, forming a single, luminous halo that enveloped them both. The light shifted and pulsed, cycling through hues and tones that the human eye normally couldn't see.

In that moment, Chuck and Lydia were one. They knew what it truly meant to
belong,
to be so close to another person that souls became inexplicably intertwined. Beyond lust, beyond passion, beyond even what people normally thought of as love…this was the union the living tried to approximate with sex and religion: two individual souls existing as one and thriving on endless cycles of compassion and empathy.

The light surrounding Chuck and Lydia grew in brightness until everything was washed away in its soothing glare.

They were one and at peace.

Chuck's eyelids opened to a familiar ceiling: acoustic tiles that looked like pale cork with silver sprinkler nozzles jutting down; an inset speaker, its cloth grill ringed with sparkling chrome. A camera in the corner whined as it swiveled toward him and he tried to lift his head. His neck, however, lacked the strength to rise more than a few inches before it plopped back onto the pillow. From the other side of the room, water gurgled from a fountain and traces of sandalwood lingered in the air.

He realized he was in his office, though he wasn't sure how. And something else bothered him as well. He'd spent many hours stretched across his couch and knew its contours intimately. It was more plush than what he currently lay upon, and he'd always thought the upholstery felt as though it were billowing up around him. His current resting spot, on the other hand, was rigid and firm. It was covered with a white fitted sheet, and when Chuck attempted to shift his weight from one buttock to the other something below crinkled. At first he thought it was paper; but once he tried the experiment again, he knew it to be plastic.

He tried to swallow, but it felt as though his throat lining had been rubbed raw with coarse grit sandpaper. This, he decided, was most likely due to the clear tube snaking into his mouth. Chuck's eyes followed the tubing to the respirator perched beside the hospital cot. He watched its compressor rise and fall for a moment, feeling his lungs inflate and deflate in perfect synchronicity. Beside the respirator stood an IV stand with partially deflated bags dangling from its hooks. Following the drips of clear liquid trickling through the tube, he studied the bandage that secured a PIC line to his inner elbow. He'd never noticed before, but these bandages looked a lot like moths with outstretched wings with the plastic junction hub serving as thorax and abdomen.

Lolling his head to the side, Chuck blinked through the haze that threatened to overtake his vision. With grogginess abating, questions circled in his mind: What was he doing there? His silver cord had disappeared…he should have still been out
there…somewhere.

He ran his tongue over his lips, hoping to bring moisture to the dry and flaky skin. His mouth, however, was as dry as his sinuses felt.

With his head to the side, he could now see the office door, and as he lay there it flew open. For a moment, he thought he'd never left the Crossfade, that he'd constructed his own reality to replace the one he'd destroyed. It was the only answer that made sense. Not simply because he was lying in his office when, by all rights, he shouldn't be, but also because the person running across the room was Lydia. Tears streamed from her eyes and a broad smile warmed her face as she leaned against the bedrails.

Chuck tried to reach for her, but, failing in that, managed to croak her name.

“Lydia…”

The woman shook her head as she placed her hand against the stubble covering Chuck's cheek.

“No. I'm afraid not, buddy.” Lydia's face…but Control's voice.

In the days to come, Chuck was debriefed and everything came to light. The reason Control had broken protocol and allowed his initial journey into the Cutscene was because she'd recognized one of the voices on their Sleeper's recording. Her sister's. Like Chuck, Control was aware of how slowly a bureaucracy's cogs turned. Sending him in was an emotional response with no precedent in the handbook.

When he'd gotten fired due to the fiasco, she'd been wracked with guilt. Control had committed Chuck's file to memory. It was an integral part of her job. And she was very good at what she did. Which meant that she hadn't even needed to search for Chuck's address: She simply knew it.

The second day into her suspension, Control had convinced Chuck's landlord that she was his fiancée and he hadn't been answering his phone. She'd turned on the waterworks and he'd given her the master key, not willing to pull himself away from
The Price Is Right
long enough to actually escort her.

Upon entering the apartment, Control found Chuck sprawled across his couch in what seemed to be a state of suspended animation. She'd seen this once before in her career, when one of her Whisks had become lost in The Divide, severing his silver cord with an uncontrollable burst of emotion.

Phone calls and impassioned arguments were made and an arrangement arrived upon. Nodens had been transferred to another office and Chuck had taken the Sleeper's place, the machines and IVs ensuring that Chuck stayed alive. For weeks Control had been fighting a battle in conference rooms, firing off e-mails, and referencing every obscure section of the handbook she thought might strengthen her case. The powers that be wanted to administer the drugs, to use Chuck's comatose body as they'd done so many others. But Control had held out hope against all odds, sure that he would come back, no matter how many people—as well as her own
experience—told
her it was impossible.

And yet there he was. Among the living with doctors, scientists, and psychologists poking and prodding, trying desperately to excavate the secret. He'd had no silver cord…so how was it that he'd managed to find his way back?

Chuck could have told them his suspicions. He could have speculated that when he and Lydia merged into a single entity the combined energy had managed to jumpstart his brain. With long weeks of physical therapy being his only reprieve to lying in bed, he'd even mentally worked out the math to prove this hypothesis. But there are some things a man needed to treasure and keep for himself, moments of perfection so transcendental that a dry case study would be an insult to the experience. The irony, however, wasn't lost upon him. Chuck had ventured out among the Crossfades thinking he would save her soul…but it in the end, it was Lydia who saved his.

He knew he'd be with her again someday. His mortal life would come to an end and he'd meet her somewhere across The Divide where even moths could never go. They would join together in the Mystery and all would be well.

But for now, memories would have to suffice.