Frost (18 page)

As he and Harper tumbled and clawed at one another, lights screamed overhead. Stars, entire worlds complete with landmasses and oceans and clouds, glorious nebulae light-years across. Great multitudes passing in cascades so great they blurred into one continuous stream, all the while turning, rending.

“Stop it, stop it, take me back, let me go!”

Jack heard the voice only on the periphery of his perception. It took a moment to recognise that it was his own, the mindless bawling of a lost child.

The fireflies in the night whipped by only faster, a screeching hail of cosmic enormity so great that his mind simply gave up, ceased counting or even seeing. Jumbled sensory bilge passed before him in meaningless flux, faster and faster, until the lights finally grew farther apart, the screaming quieted, and Harper’s rattling breaths consumed the void.

Then, suddenly and absolutely, all was still, and at peace.

Frost covered Jack’s skin in a suit of snowflakes. His wrist was whole, and Harper stood on the other side of the tree, which had appeared once more—a much smaller version of the black thing in the cavern, no larger than a Bonsai, made of a single piece of glowing purple crystal.

They observed one another, two entities with the fate of worlds in their hands. Harper wore none of his outer skin now. Before Jack stood a naked, milky-skinned creature akin to a deep-sea fish, an agent of the unbeing.

“So,” Harper said.

“So.”

A smile, perhaps. It was hard to tell. Harper no longer had lips. “How does it feel, to stand there and know all you can do is watch—”

“We blew the vaults.” Jack let his words work their way into the holes in Harper’s head that served as ears. The smarmy sneer vanished. Jack went on. “We took down your people at the Beacons, too. All that talk about your new world order? There won’t be anybody left. They’ll go along with the rest of us.”

Jack was already on the way to folding his arms in triumph when Harper started laughing.

“You have no idea what you’ve done, do you?” His laugh doubled when Jack failed to answer. “You have no idea where you’ve led me!”

Jack searched inside his head, trying to
flex
, to reach out to something, the tree, anything. But there was nothing here, nothing to help him. He was on his own.

“I have power that makes the fools of your world quake in their little cotton socks,” Harper hissed, taking a single step to the side. Jack took a counter step in the opposite direction. “But you… you’re one in an age. I could never get to this place alone. I can’t thank you enough for bringing me here.”

Jack’s knees tried to buckle. Only by thinking of Kat’s tear-stained face, and Barry’s lifeless corpse, did he keep standing. He and Harper circled one another, one foot passing over the other.

“I’ll stop you. You said it yourself, I have the power.” He glanced at the tree. “I won’t let you do this.”

Harper tittered, feinting a little to the right, laughing with spite when Jack jumped. “You don’t have
that
kind of power.” He moved again, and Jack was ready for another feint, but this time Harper’s body became a blur. Like liquid poured from a glass, he rushed around the tree in a smear of limbs and appeared snarling, a vision of hell-fire, in front of Jack’s face. “This is
my
power.” His hand closed over Jack’s throat, and tore him towards the tree.

Jack gargled. There was no pain here, not in this place, but he felt himself grow fainter, dim just like Barry had done. The throbbing little crystal tree floated closer despite his struggling, so pathetic and futile against the unbreakable clamp around his neck.

“Now, it’s time to do what you were made for: serve my master.” Harper paused, considering playfully, and turned Jack’s head to face him. “
Our
master. Isn’t that right?” He nodded Jack’s head and the two of them were joined in horrific pantomime, puppet and puppeteer; a sad show on the edge of the universe.

I’m totally alone, now.

Harper arched an eyebrow, hearing every note. “Yes. You are.” He turned them both back to the tree. “Now let’s clean up that nasty infestation we have back home. Too many people,
tsk tsk tsk.
It just won’t do.”

He gripped Jack’s hand and forced it out in front of them.

Jack struggled desperately, and for a while he was indeed able to resist, a fact that caused Harper to snarl with unfettered fury, all his suave charm stripped away along with his pretty mask. They wobbled precariously, joined like lovers, hands clasped, reaching and leaning.

But there was no stopping it. Inexorably, his fingertips inched down onto the sparkling branches.

Jack shook his head. “No, I don’t understand. Why me? Tell me. You owe me that!”

“Uh huh. And this is the part where you stall me, and I tell you my evil plans until you find a way out. Sorry, kid. The real world doesn’t play nice.”

Jack’s hand touched the tree.

Cold more intense than any flame lanced up his arm, filling his body. With it came knowledge, the whole story, unveiled and bare, laid out like a book. A place of eternal darkness lay spread before him, the source of all the blackness of All Where. Somewhere nearby, something swung back and forth, back and forth, a steady rhythm driving every clock’s gear wheel, every moment that ever was.

Something lurked in this space, filling it yet lost amongst it, imprisoned in this placeless nothing for so long that even divine things of purity and light had become tyrannical, twisted, and insane—even angels.

“See your people’s new home,” Harper said joyously. “My master has held the pendulum’s swing for far too long. Now its burden will be theirs, slaves to its weight for all time.”

“This is where we’re going, where you’re sending us all.”

“Sorry, boy, there was never any stopping me.”

Jack shook his head, only a little at first but then vehemently, enough to jar them both. “No. You’re a maggot.” He saw so far, finally saw the forces at play; like the vast eye that had turned on him, he felt the attentions of entities that dwarfed the stars turn upon him. “You’re nothing. That’s why you could only tip the scales and kill my world.”

Harper grunted, close at Jack’s shoulder. “I am doing this, you hear? I am doing this to you and everyone you ever met. I am taking everything, from all of you.” A hungry growl rattled deep in his chest. “And with your help, now I can do so much more. Like you say, before I could only tip the scales. With you, I can cut out the middle man. I’ll tear it all down at once.”

Jack knew it could happen. He had that power inside him. If Harper had brought the End down over the Earth, it would have destabilised things, thrown out of balance a precarious peace.

But Jack’s connection to the Web had taken him to this place, a place nobody should ever be able to get to. And Harper had followed. That meant all bets were off. None of the rules applied. The slide that might have been started by Harper’s work would become a crashing cascade.

The entire Web, all places, all times, All Where, would fall.

Then Jack was laughing. “No. No, you’re nothing. They’ll cast you aside as soon as your work is done.”

He had eyes only for the tree. Its voice was mute here, but he heard it all the same. It spoke to him through the light. There was a chance. But it meant big sacrifices.

The tree’s radiance throbbed ever more powerful, leeching into Jack’s flesh, consuming it. His arm had started to crystallise, becoming one with the tree. And as it did so, it whispered to him, and he knew what he had to do.

“I see now,” he said, knowing that nobody heard him. It didn’t matter. He said it anyway. Countless lives rode on these moments, and though nobody would ever know what happened here, it was right that somebody had spoken.

Harper flinched back from the encroaching crystal, almost losing hold of Jack. He hissed.

Jack laughed harshly in his face. “I see you.” He nodded to the tree. “We both see you very well.” He leaned close to a set of teeth that could have stripped the meat from his bones in a flash, and said, “I see your fear.”

Harper didn’t move. “Enough of this. Enough!” He took hold of Jack harder, pressing Jack’s hand back down. “Now you realise what you are,” he whispered. “Congratulations, boy, you get to end not just your own world, but all worlds.”

Jack waited.

Barry was wrong. It was never about winning or saving the world. It was bigger than that.

“I’m sorry for what you are,” Jack said at the last moment before the crystalline growths reached Harper’s fingertips. Then the creature squealed, smoke rising before them, the crystal shrinking back from him like water around a rock.

“What is this?” he screeched.

“You didn’t know when you followed me, did you?”

Shock beamed out from those cold beady eyes.

“The reason you could never get to this place is that you can’t touch it directly, not without it destroying you.”

Harper jerked fitfully beside him. “No, no!”

Jack held them. Harper had pulled him within reach of the tree like a rag doll, but now the balance of power shifted. He knew now, and with knowledge came power. Coupled with the creature’s very mortal fear, he held their hands but inches from the crystal.

“I see it all, now.”

“
Let me go!
”

Jack’s mind shimmered with untold leagues of images, each as clear as the devil beside him.

All across the world, people woke or turned in, worked in fields and laughed on beaches, screamed and cried, fought and died, were born and made love, read and imagined, destroyed and created. They would never see it coming.

It was he who would make it happen, to save countless more. His world was doomed either way. But, somewhere, things would go on.

Harper fought like a wild animal, clawing and biting and spitting. But not one blow made a mark. “What are you doing?”

“What I’m meant to.”

“It’ll destroy us both, fool!”

“I know.”

Jack’s fingers drifted closer, stopped and trembled, then approached once more. The battle for entire worlds, concentrated through a single hand.

Harper’s breaths came ragged and feral in his ear. “You cannot do this. You cannot. I forbid it.” The voice grew enormous, lost between the nasal protests of a toddler, and hurricane gales. “I was young when the first slime crawled from the oceans. I commanded legions of shadow. You will not be the end of me. I FORBID IT. I COMMAND YOU!”

Jack smiled, and wishing upon all the people about to lose their lives, looked into Harper’s eyes. “Go fuck yourself.”

His fingertips touched the crystal. “Forgive me,” he whispered.

Then it all went away.

The same scream that had wailed from the radio blared from the ether, pressing in so hard Jack was sure his eardrums would perforate. But he couldn’t move, held frozen in place, his body one with the crystal.

Harper screamed, a naked high-pitched sound that would never end. His pale skin fell away, exposing muscle and tendon, steaming and blackening as the crystal spread, spinning him all the while, combusted dust drifting up, twirling and vanishing.

In Jack’s mind, a film reel spooled to life, and a green witch wailed in tandem with the agonised creature.
I’m melting, melting!

Milton Harper’s ashes were scattered by some unseen, disgusted power, to the far reaches of All Where. His screams, the terrible conscious knowing of coming oblivion, didn’t stop until the last fragment of bone puffed away.

Sweet silence reigned in his wake, and All Where grew an infinitesimal shade brighter.

Then with infinite sorrow, that same presence turned upon Jack, a great and noble creature of compound eyes and many giant, furry legs. It laid a gentle touch upon him, and did the duty to which it was bound, bringing ruin down upon the Earth.

*

The End struck at 04:15 EST, on June 3rd. Jack watched through an infinitude of hidden windows, saw the apocalypse from enough perspectives to see every expression, every surprised gasp. The world over, seven billion people paused, caught in a momentary paroxysm of bone-chilling cold, and pain. Then, as one, they vanished.

The Frost did its work.

In its wake, the world was left silent, broken and scattered. Harper had told no lies: every piece of digital memory had been erased, every radio frequency consumed by the ethereal scream of the crystal cavern.

From a single impossible step away, Jack Shannon watched the Earth purged of life. He was somewhere else yet again, the tree gone, all sources of light, gone.

He was back in that place, the awful dark place where the swinging behemoth oscillated, unseen. Carpeting its surface, stretching away into infinity, naked and writhing and screaming, billions of people roiled before him.

They held it now, the terrible weight of the cosmos.

But it was nothing to his burden, the guilt of having put them there. His family were out there, Kat and all those who had fought against this for so long. It had all come to nothing.

Jack wept against unseen walls, suspended above them in a transparent cage, his prison, condemned to watch them slave under the awful strain. “Forgive me!”

The balance was broken.

Harper hadn’t lied about that. Jack might have stopped the Fall, for now. But something was wrong. That much was obvious.

Seven billion souls had been shackled in place of something out there, something that, while still bound to this place, now knew some measure of freedom for the first time in the age of all the stars in the heavens. And it was angry—a rage that permeated every inch of this place, choking him.

He watched the writhing bodies for a long time. He didn’t bother to gauge how long. Somewhere between seconds and years. Yet no matter how long he stared in his little box and watched, it grew no less painful, the guilt raged just as strong like hot lead through his veins, and it seemed no less weird that this could have happened.

Even here, stripped of the very Earth itself, slaves transported to labour a colony at the end of the universe, it was weird. Some things just were.