Broken Dreams (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 5) (28 page)

Mara ran across the room to the window and looked over the front lawn. The grass was trampled and flattened. Deep thinly crosshatched scars of dirt shone through the matted greenery. No miders were left outside.

“They must all be in the house by now,” she said.

The door rattled, causing Sam to jump. He backed away, taking measured steps toward his sister.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “Stay over there by the door. I’ll try a little experiment.” She swung around and opened the window. Moving to the next window over, she slid that one open as well. Glancing at the front lawn once more, she turned back around and said, “Okay, I want you to open the door but don’t run. Stand your ground. I want to see what the miders do when they come into the room.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Sam said. “I can hear them scratching at the top of the door. They may already be in the walls for all we know.”

“Just trust me. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Sam rolled his eyes, walked back to the door and grabbed the knob. “You ready?”

Mara braced herself, as if preparing to be tackled, and nodded.

He turned the knob and jumped out of the path of the door, which swung open under its own power, releasing an avalanche of brass pods and twitching legs that spilled across the floor. Wasting little time, the miders untangled themselves and stampeded across the room, streaming over Sam’s feet and past his legs. While he kicked at them, the little messengers ignored him, making a beeline for the windows where Mara stood.

“See?” Mara said. “They are after me.”

She disappeared in a billowing cloud of steam.

All arachnoid twitching in the room stopped for a moment. A single mider crawled onto the sill of one of the windows Mara had opened, extended its legs to raise its body, as if getting a better view of the front lawn, and jumped out the window.

The rest of the miders followed. Thousands poured out the window until the room was empty, leaving Sam standing there, dumbfounded.

Mara appeared on the side of the road, facing the front of the manor. Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she waited, wondering how long or if the miders could find her. She didn’t have to wait long.

They streamed out the two windows of the bedroom, down the face of the large house and onto the front porch roof. The displaced front door and several broken windows on the first floor disgorged thousands more. They merged into an amorphous mass and spilled across the lawn, flooding its way back to the road. The
tick-tick-tick
reached Mara’s ears, and she felt her skin crawl.

As the leading edge of the miders approached, Mara narrowed her eyes at them as she lifted her arms. They froze, about ten deep. They stopped moving, legs in midextension or midstep. Behind them the troops kept marching forward, crawling over the laggards as if they were berms. Once again Mara froze Time, creating a second tier of motionless miders.

Still they came, one wave after another, and each time another battalion of miders crested the mound of their comrades, Mara froze them in place and added to the growing wall that looked like a brass trellis.

“What are you doing?” Sam said as he walked around the pile of frozen miders.

“How many more miders are heading this way?” Mara asked. “I can’t see over this mess anymore.”

“I don’t know. It looks to me like you have frozen about two-thirds of them. The rest are out of the house and heading this way,” he said.

“Good. Go back inside and make sure the Pings, and anyone else for that matter, stay there.”

“Why are you freezing them? What’ll that accomplish? They’ll just keep coming after you once you let them go.”

Mara snarled at him. “I don’t have time to explain, and I can’t concentrate on them and you at the same time. Would you please just do it? Go back to the manor and don’t come out until I tell you it’s safe.”

“All right. I’m going. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

A mider jumped from the top of the pile and flung itself at her head. She leaned back as it flew past her face, and she froze it.

“I hope so too,” Mara said. “Listen, when you get back to the porch, hang out there for a minute and let me know when all the miders have been frozen.”

Sam walked to the edge of the barrier—now looking like a long, narrow haystack. There he paused and glanced back at her. “Whatever you do, do it soon.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Look at your hands.”

Mara held them up. They were flickering.

He walked away, disappearing behind the wall of miders.

She continued to freeze anything that moved, even the sneaky bugs that tried to do an end-run around the sides of the barrier. After five more minutes, she heard Sam shouting from the house. “Okay, I think that’s all of them.”

“Thanks. Now please wait inside,” she yelled back. To herself, she muttered while examining her less-than-solid hands again, “I hope I have enough juice to pull this off.”

Rolling her shoulders and her neck, she stepped back from the miders. Holding out her arms with her hands splayed, she grimaced. Lightning shot from her fingertips, striking the ground at the base of the frozen miders, ripping through the earth and tearing a massive gash across the lawn. A fault opened, widening and lengthening as if tectonic plates had slid apart, exposing empty blackness instead of soil.

The mider wall crumbled, and the brass messengers tumbled into the darkness, dissolving into nothingness as they fell, releasing streams of blue-black mist that snaked upward.

Seeing the mist swirl, Mara screamed in frustration as it coalesced and floated unharmed in the air above the large and growing opening in the ground.

Then everything disappeared.

* * *

Feeling mental whiplash, Mara blinked and shook her head. Her surroundings had changed so radically she couldn’t register what had happened, where she was. Grasping for context, she looked around and saw a woman in a lab coat sitting at a round Plexiglas table.

“Hello, Mara,” the woman said.

Mara wavered and said, “Um, hello?”

“You look a little disoriented. It’ll take a few minutes for your brain to become accustomed to the holographic interface.”

Mara focused on the woman’s face and her voice, and that helped. “Dr. Canfield? Where did you come from?”

The repository doctor smiled and said, “I’ve been here the whole time. How do you feel?”

“Fine, I guess. I was in the middle of something. What is happening to me?”

“You remember the holographic interface we conducted with Mr. Ping. We’re now conducting one with you.” Her eyes swept over Mara’s body, and she frowned. “Where did you get those clothes and how are you projecting them through the hologram?”

Mara looked down at the leather vest and pants she wore. “Mr. Ping gave them to me after I crossed over to this realm. It’s a long story. Are the occupants of the receptacles more stable now?”

The doctor nodded. “Yes. Shortly after you entered the receptacle, we reestablished control, and things calmed down. Can you explain what you are experiencing during stasis? It is important that we understand.”

“I can’t talk about it now. You caught me at a bad time, and I need to get back,” Mara said. “After that, I’ll explain everything. I promise.”

The doctor looked a little put off but said, “Very well. Just so you know, we are ready to reconnect the other Mara to the receptacle signal network. Her synthetic body was fabricated much sooner than expected, and we have to sync it with her biological body. That means you must come off the network.”

“No! That can’t happen yet,” Mara said. “Please, you have to give me a little time. We cannot leave things like this.”

The doctor shook her head. “It would be unconscionable to leave your counterpart disconnected for any longer than necessary. She has as much right to live her life as anyone.”

“I understand, and I want that for her too. Can’t you give me one day? Just twenty-four hours? That’s all I ask. Then you can disconnect me, and I’ll take my friends home. I promise,” Mara said. “It’s a matter of life and death, not just for me, but for her as well.”

The doctor appeared to consider it for a moment. “I can get you a day, but not a moment longer. The next time we talk, it will be in person. In twenty-four hours. Understood?”

“I understand. Can you send me back now?”

* * *

Mara snapped awake and found herself staring at a large blue-black cloud hovering and spinning over the manor. The Aphotis was still here. She had hoped she had dispatched it for good when she had destroyed the miders.
Should have known it wouldn’t be that easy
.

“Look, she’s awake,” Sam said.

Mara looked at Sam, standing a few feet away with their father. “Awake? What are you talking about?”

“You were in one of those trances like Ping when he was interfacing with you in the physical world. That’s what was going on. Right?” he said.

Her father looked worried and touched her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “I’m fine. Sam’s right. The doctor at the repository initiated a holographic interface with me. She told me that it’s time for your Mara to come back. I asked them to wait a day so I could clean up the mess I’ve made.”

“See? I told you,” Sam said to his father. “The trance didn’t have nothing to do with the big gaping hole she put in your front yard.”

Dr. Lantern looked up at the roiling cloud over the manor and down into the chasm. “What is going on here, Mara? And how in the world will you fix it?”

“The Aphotis possessed the miders and attacked the manor, I believe, to get to the baby,” she said. “When I attempted to stop it, I destroyed the miders, but the Aphotis floated from them. As you can see, he’s still drifting around up there. As far as how I will fix it, I’m not sure. I’ve got less than twenty-four hours to get rid of something that’s already dead.”

“What set this man’s soul free in the first place?” he asked.

“In his realm when people die, their souls are interred in luminaires, soul-keeper vessels that look like lightbulbs. As a matter of fact, they use them as lightbulbs throughout their society. Unfortunately this guy was in my realm when he died—where there are no luminaries, the funeral officiates who can entomb the dead.”

“And there is no way we could replicate the process?” he asked.

“It never occurred to me to try,” Mara said. She pointed to the misty cloud. “I’m not sure how I would go about it. Trying to force an amorphous cloud into a small container would be like herding the proverbial cats, wouldn’t it?”

“How do you herd cats?” he asked, like a professor walking her through a complex problem.

“You don’t,” Sam interjected. “You coax them with food or toys, something that attracts them to where you want them to go.”

“I appreciate a good metaphor as much as anyone, but that’s not helping,” Mara said. “I don’t see how we can attract—wait a minute—
attraction
. That might work. You’re a genius.”

“I am?” Sam asked.

“Well, if you’ve got something that will work, now might be a good time to try it,” Dr. Lantern said. “Look.”

The cloud above the manor, spinning itself into a funnel, dropped its tail into a chimney at the back left side of the roof. The blue-black vapor poured into the manor.

“Where does that chimney go? What rooms have fireplaces?” Mara asked.

“There are no fireplaces in that part of the house. It’s a vent for the fabrication shop,” he said.

Mara ran past the two Pings who had just stepped off the staircase and approached the empty front door frame. Scrambling across the unhinged door that now lay to the left of the stairs, wedged against the front wall of the foyer, she yelled over her shoulder, “Is Bruce in the shop?”

One of the Pings—she assumed it was the other one—said, “I believe he ran out to pick up supplies. I don’t think he has returned yet.”

After hopping off the door, she ran over to the double doors leading to the fabrication shop and rattled the doorknobs. Locked. Growling in frustration, she turned around. “Please tell me that you have the key.”

“Of course,” the other Ping said, thrusting his hand into his pocket and walking over to her.

Mara’s father and Sam followed him.

“Hold on a moment,” Dr. Lantern said. “You can’t go barreling in there with no way to defend yourself. Remember, you should consider the baby.”

“I want to see what the Aphotis is up to, where it is going,” Mara said. “I have no intention of getting into a fight with it. At least not yet.”

She grabbed the key and slid it into the lock. A vibration ran from the key through her fingers and hand. Cocking her head toward the seam between the doors, she heard a rumble commence.

Glancing back at the other Ping, she asked, “What’s the noise? Do you recognize it?”

He listened for a moment and said, “It sounds like the vertical conveyer, the one that feeds the smelter.”

“If Bruce isn’t in there, can the machinery start up on its own?” she asked.

He shook his head. “There is no automation or remote control, if that’s what you’re asking. You have to be in the room to start it.”

Buzzing and grinding noises blended with the chainlike clatter.

Mara’s gaze slid to the other Ping as she listened.

“Power tools, saws and drills,” he said.

Cracking open the door, Mara stuck her head inside. A blue-black haze filled the fabrication shop, but, to the left, on the far side of the counter, it swirled, thickening around a large table saw and a drill press. Both ran unattended and kicked up a white cloud within the roiling mist. To the right, the haze concentrated on the vertical conveyor, its scooping buckets rattling and shaking so much as they rose from the ore bin that they were on the verge of flying off their tracks. At the top of the conveyor, the smelting vat rocked on its hinges, sloshing liquid metal close to its rim, sending spatter into the air.

Mara pulled back from the door, narrowing the opening. Tapping the other Ping on the shoulder, she said, “I want you to come to the steam lab with me. I need some quick advice and assistance.”