Ashes of Foreverland (28 page)

“I'm sorry, Cynthia. This wasn't your fault.”

Hesitantly, Cyn began to reach out but stopped. It could be a trick, all of this a bigger plan to throw her into Patricia's mind. Or Alessandra's.

“You didn't deserve this,” Barb said.

Sadness stirred in Cyn's chest. To take her hand was to risk it all.

To fall again.

Barb let go of Patricia and offered both her hands.

“You won't hurt me?” Cyn's voice sounded as childish as the words, a little girl afraid of what an adult would do to her again. She hated the mist filling her eyes.

“You've hurt yourself enough.”

Cyn finally slid her fingers into Barb's palm. Jewelry jingled.

Just like that, her hands were empty. No grand explosion, no insights of truth or fireworks. Barb just disappeared.

And the weight that held her down all these years had been lifted. She threw her arms around Danny and began to weep.

Alone, at last
.

The Institute of Technological Research, New York City

S
he collapsed like a windless sail.

Cyn had been speaking to herself, arguing with her imagination and pausing to listen. Danny let it play out, afraid an interruption would kick the legs of her sanity. She had been so stable since leaving the wilderness, so confident and powerful. But her sanity was a slippery slope. All he could do was watch her slide.

Lilac overwhelmed the medicinal scents and animals in the next room. It made no sense.

He tried to peel off her dead weight. He couldn't hold her up anymore. His knees were getting weak and the floor was spinning. He locked his knees and leaned against the door. The walls jittered, but the tables never seemed to move. He gulped at the thinning air.

“Breathe, Danny.”

He focused on her face, expecting to see the haunted emptiness of a broken soul. Instead, the unblinking confidence was back. Her eyes, still puffy and red, cheeks slick with tears, were relaxed; the pupils large and calming.

The room flickered.

Sometimes it would turn then stop. Occasionally, an overlay of the same room was slightly askew. That's how Santiago sometimes felt, like a projection, an illusion.

A mask.

“What the hell is happening?” he asked.

“Foreverland messed me up, Danny.”

“It messed us all up.”

“My demon was different than yours.”

Danny abruptly grabbed the table, his fingers accidently brushing against Patricia's arm, the skin like brittle paper.
My demons are different than yours, but we all have them, just the same.

They were surrounded by beige envelopes with preprinted labels. He was holding one in a fist. He'd seen it from across the room when Cyn was ranting. It was beige, also. But there was no preprinted label.

Large green letters.

“What is it?” Cyn asked.

He held it up to the bright light.
Danny Boy, Cyn and Alessandra.

It was addressed to all three of them, as if waiting for them to arrive. This entire experience—the traffic lights turning green, the empty Institute, the man in the lab coat waiting for them—was warped.

But nothing had made sense since that first letter arrived.

He slid his thumb under the flap. Three discs fell out. They were the same discs as before—weighty and perforated. The edges were different colors. There was the blue one and yellow like before.

The third disc was forest green, the exact shade of Alessandra's gown.

“Three discs,” he muttered. “Three discs.”

“What do they mean?”

He shook his head. He never figured it out. And now three of them had been mailed to the Institute.
What does he want us to see?

A tremor inside him, a fault line breaking loose a current of fear. They were in danger. “Cyn,” he stammered, “I think we should go...”

“We can't.”

He could feel her pulse in his hand, could feel her chest rise and fall like the long easy strokes of the ocean. She looked at the heavy plastic curtain.

“Why?”

“We have to look.”

“We can come back.” He held the discs up. “I need some time to think.”

“It's why he sent us.”

“Who?”

“Reed.”

“When did you...”

The tremor returned. This time he felt it below his feet, not inside his chest. The building shook like something very large fell on Fifth Avenue.
Was she talking to Reed?

“What's back there?” he asked.

“We have to look.”

“You know, tell me.”

“I don't know.”

But she did, she knew what was back there. Some part of Danny knew, too. He knew the truth was back there. That's why Reed sent them here. He didn't want to know the truth; it would be too much. He also knew that if they didn't look, if they didn't know, they would continue searching for it.

And it's right there.

Another tremor rattled items on the wall.

“It has to be now.” Cyn reached out. “Because only now exists.”

He took her hand.

Cyn clutched the curtain. She waited with her knuckles white, the heavy plastic bunched in her hand. Danny placed his hand over hers. Together, they pulled it aside.

The rings slid in the metal track.

Two more tables.

Somewhere outside Philadelphia

T
yler!

The old man snapped upright.

He had fallen asleep in the transport van. The straight-back seats were rigid, but he hadn't slept in days. Exhaustion ran him down within an hour of leaving the Colorado penitentiary.

He wiped the spittle from his chin, using both hands since they were bound with plastic ties.

His head roared.
The voices
.

Someone had shouted his name above the fray.

Gramm was across from Tyler, his head leaning against the wall separating them from the drivers. His eyes were closed, lips parted.

Tyler heard a voice, though. A familiar voice.

He sat upright, his backbone rigid, and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and, like Gramm had taught him during the days before the transport van arrived, reached out to find an Internet connection he could ride through the ethers to find Patricia. They were just outside Philadelphia. The voices wreaked havoc on his concentration.

The static roared.

A small wave of panic tossed him head over heels, like a surfer crashing through the undercurrent.

TYLER!

“Take the next exit!” Tyler slammed his fists on the wire-mesh window. “The next exit!”

Gramm jumped. “What's wrong?”

Tyler squatted in front of the window. He had agreed to the transfer orders that would take him to Attica, agreed to be shackled like any other prisoner in case they were inspected. All the papers were in order, nothing would stop them from getting close enough that he could make a detour into New York City.

He would lay his body in the Institute and, when the time was right, exit it for good.

“What's wrong?” Gramm asked again.

Tyler braced himself on the seat as the van took the exit. He locked eyes with Gramm. Their biomites synchronized, their thoughts mingled like salt in the ocean.

It was Samuel's voice.

Tyler never felt the transport van pull into the rest stop, didn't feel it jerk to a stop. He didn't bother releasing the driver's mind from his control. As a result, the driver sat like a mannequin. The authorities would eventually find him sitting in a puddle of piss, with his stiff hands on the steering wheel.

Tyler lay on the bench, eyes closed.

He pined for the quick slip of the needle, the direct pipeline to his beloved. But Gramm was there. He was already an expert at navigating the wireless connections. He carved through the cloud of voices like a missile guiding him through black cyberspace to find Patricia.

She was still in her own Foreverland, waiting for Tyler.

When he arrived at her side, she frowned.

Something was wrong.

New York City

T
he air had become gritty. It scratched Alex's throat.

Somewhere, sirens were singing.

She felt warm, felt full. She was almost asleep when the voices returned.

Hundreds of them.

Someone carried her through the white noise that stuck to her throat, crashed in her lungs. It was the breath of the universe.

I am the universe.

And that thought gave her comfort.

She was everything and wanted nothing more.

Just to sleep.

In bliss.

I love.

Perhaps it would have all ended there, she would've gone to sleep forever had the visions not come. She hadn't even realized that her senses were gone, that sight, smell, touch and sound had been replaced with the endless field of static, this amniotic world of voices.

It started with antiseptic—a distinct flavor of evergreen pine that clung to her tongue and sinuses beneath the ever-present smell of lilac. It reminded her of something, of somewhere.

There were halls. Long white halls.

Hard floors and open doors.

Wet fur.

The Institute.

Her eyes snapped opened. The white static evaporated in the present moment where two people, one on each side, held her hands.

A boy.

A girl.

They led her through the animal lab, past Coco splayed on the center table to the door on the other side, the door she had seen once before...

Pressure hardened between her eyes, in the center of her forehead. Pressure that condensed and hardened like a collapsing star.

The door opened.

She saw the table.

She saw the very old woman, saw the needle.

But on the other table.

The other table.

She saw.

The pressure burst between her eyes, filled the universe with scorching light, radiated pain to the hundreds of voices that cried out, that shrank into silence. The explosion released memories.

She knew everything there was to know. She knew the truth.

Alessandra was awakened.

——————————————

T
imes Square.

Lights sparkled. The streets empty.

The buildings punched the gray sky.

Rain fell like heavy drops of mercury, snapping on the asphalt, pressing her shirt against her skin; rivulets raced down her face, dripping from her nose, tasting warm.

Salty.

The giant screens that advertised Broadway shows were blank, overlooking the heavy rain that filled the street, raced down the gutters. Trash drained into the storm sewers.

Thunder rumbled.

The screens came to life, flickering like lightning.

Images flashed in a blur of colors. She stood in the middle of the empty street, rain pouring down, watching the images slow like a roulette wheel. They weren't advertisements for Kodak or Virgin Records or a Broadway show.

They were memories.

Memorial Day. She was six. They were in the park, having a picnic. She was flying a kite with her cousins, holding the string as the plastic wings rattled in the wind, climbing into the sky. She was sucking on a Popsicle stick, watching her parents argue.

Watching her dad leave.

Drive away.

Forever.

Graduation day. She finished college at the top of her class, gave the honorary speech, and received offers from a dozen companies, one of which she accepted.

The Washington Post
. Where she met Samuel. He was short and stout, prematurely balding. Smart and funny. They married two years later.

Lightning shredded the sky.

Samuel doesn't look like that.

They got married at Martha's Vineyard. They were career-minded, ready to change the world. They lived in Washington, DC. She covered politics for the paper. He was a lawyer.

But Samuel doesn't look like...

Alex worked ten years for
The Washington Post
. Samuel took a job in New York and they moved again. Alex continued investigative reporting. She wrote books, toured the country.

She got pregnant.

But Samuel...

They hadn't planned it, but things happen. Her career had always come first, but the pregnancy changed her.

Pregnant?

She never wanted to be a mother. She had seen too many bad things to bring a child into this world. But when she gave birth, everything changed.

Her world suddenly had meaning.

Rain gushed into the sewers. The heavens opened and dropped rain like a bucket, obscuring the birth of her little boy. He had a name. They were holding him.

Smiling and holding him.

Her little boy had a name.

He had a name.

Lucas.

A shiver ran down her back, kicked her legs. She fell on the dashed crosswalk, punched in the gut. Lightning splashed the gray sky that engulfed the skyscrapers, temporarily blinding her.

A solitary car was coming down the road.

The blurred headlights moved slowly down the side of the road, the reflection stretching over the asphalt. A streetlight turned red. The car stopped.

Alex stood.

Blood was smeared on her knees. Her hands.

Her leg began throbbing. She'd only fallen on her knees, but her whole body suddenly ached. She looked up; the car was still waiting on the light.

All alone.

You need to move,
she thought.
Move!

Despite the empty roads, panic gripped her. She wasn't thinking of herself. The car had to move.
It has to move!
She sprinted with her hand out, her bare feet slapping the pavement. On the screens, the memory reels displayed the present moment.

The car's at a stoplight.

She didn't watch the images, because she already knew.

The stoplight turns green.

She remembered.

The car eases into the intersection.