The city had been a din of pandemonium, thanks to her team’s efforts, but now everyone and everything had just stopped. Everything had drawn to a complete pause, with people looking around in confusion, when Alex realized she felt different.
In fact, the whole world felt different.
Very
different.
She had no idea what was happening, but she knew something fundamental about existence had just changed. She couldn’t explain why or how she knew. It was an internal instinct, as pure as knowing how to breathe without ever having to choose to.
It was a terrifying feeling that left her sick to her stomach, as if something too big for her had just taken place, and she felt infinitesimal next to it, like standing in the path of an F5 tornado and being too terrified to move. In the handful of times in her life when she had stared down her own mortal coil and very nearly shaken it off, in those moments when her life was about to end and her past flashed before her eyes, when she expected to feel calm but instead felt so panic-stricken she couldn’t catch her breath . . . this moment felt exactly the same.
She still couldn’t see well because of the glowing of the Rings of Dominion throughout the cavernous city. She wore one of the rings on her right middle finger and it glowed brighter than she’d ever seen before—even brighter than that incident months back that Grant called The Forging. Then suddenly they’d flashed out, like a candle that had been violently blown by a gust of wind. But the concussive effects lingered on her retinas, and she put out an arm, bracing herself on a nearby wall as she waited for the blinding to clear.
Shapes around her soon began to come into focus, and in another moment she saw Ethan’s face. He still stood only inches from her, dressed in his black jumpsuit and balaclava that had been peeled back over the top of his head. He held a pistol at his side, pointed down at the ground. His bleary eyes met hers, and there was no masking the fact that he too was utterly horrified by whatever was happening.
“I’m too late! It’s already begun!” he whispered so no one else could hear. “
HE’S COMING!!
”
As Ethan spoke, Alex noticed a strange tingle that seemed to be spreading across her entire body, from her hair down to her toenails. It was the oddest sensation she’d ever experienced, like a mixture of a mild electrical current and a cold trickle of water. She didn’t like it at all.
Ethan turned away from her and looked out at the city, where the glow from the Rings had flashed out, shrouding the cavern in foreboding shadows once more. “I’m sorry,” Ethan was saying, and Alex had no idea what he was talking about. “I got here too late. Maybe we could have prevented it if . . .”
Alex’s mind swam with strange new sensations, her limbs suddenly heavy and slow. And it wasn’t just her. Everyone and everything was moving the same way. It was like trying to swim through syrup. Her senses also seemed to have sharpened considerably. She could see the tiniest grains of dirt in the ground beneath her feet with perfect clarity; she could hear the trickling of water running into pipes that lined the small lake on the other side of the city, as if she were standing right next to the sound.
All around her a new sound grew and built, rising throughout the city. Panic and alarm and terror rang from voices everywhere. She wasn’t the only one noticing these weird new sensations, and soon a cacophony rose—a terrible combination of fear and excitement.
“I don’t understand!” Alex shouted over the increasing commotion, her own voice painfully loud in her ears. “What’s going on? What’s happening?”
Ethan’s face fell ashen as he looked up and scanned around, taking in their surroundings and the people who lived here. It was the first time she could recall ever seeing him afraid. Alex could tell from Ethan’s expression that he felt what was happening to them every bit as much as she did.
“We’d better find Grant!” she shouted.
“He’s gone,” Ethan replied, his expression grave and sorrowful. It was the same expression the doctors wore whenever they passed on news to her mother before Alex’s Shift.
With only the slightest hesitation, he turned and began to run.
“What are you doing?” she shouted.
He flung a glance back her way but never stopped running. “I’m sorry, it’s too late now!” he cried, but then stopped and faced her. “There’s nothing I can do! For
all
our sakes, I have to get out of here—”
“What’s going on?” she demanded. He obviously knew more than he was saying, and there wasn’t time to keep secrets. “What’s happening?”
“I’ll come back for you. For all of you. I’ll save you if I can. I promise. I’m sorry . . .”
With eyes filled with deepest regret, he turned from her one last time and vanished into the darkness.
Lisa knew her heart was going to stop beating.
Daniel had killed himself and all she could feel was a desire to be with him.
Squeak, squeak.
His feet dangled and swayed. Dangled and swayed.
Lisa’s mind kicked into overdrive. He couldn’t have done this to himself; he couldn’t have committed suicide. There was no way for him to string himself up there; he had nothing to climb on. She looked about her cell, thoughts grasping for something, anything—
There!
In Daniel’s adjacent cell, she spotted his walking cane, leaning against the corner between their cells. He’d nearly worn the thing out in Jerusalem; the MI-5 agents were good enough to allow him to keep it for moving about inside his cell. It was made of a lightweight aluminum, so it would do him little good as a weapon, they’d reasoned. But Lisa thought it
might
just be strong enough to . . .
She strained her arms inside, reaching,
reaching
. . . It was too far, just outside of her grasp.
“GUARD! HELP ME! SOMEBODY, PLEASE!!”
Lisa untied one tennis shoe, shoved it between the bars separating her cell from Daniel’s, and flung it one-handed against the corner space where the cane stood.
Please . . . !
The shoe knocked the bottom of the cane, toppling it with a clang against the metal bars, the handle somehow falling inside her grasp.
She pulled the cane through the bars, stood, and extended it again. The end of it touched Daniel’s noose, but she couldn’t quite manipulate it . . .
Lisa pulled the cane back in, flipped it around so she held the bottom, and stuck it back through the bars. Carefully, she hooked the rubber grip handle down through the coiled fabric around Daniel’s throat and tugged on it with all her might.
With a surge of strength that had to be pure adrenaline, she broke the light fixture above Daniel free from its attachment to the ceiling, and Daniel and the entire apparatus crashed to the ground. The racket was so loud that if the guards hadn’t heard her screams, they would surely have heard this. Anyone passing by on the
street outside
was likely to have heard this.
But she didn’t wait for them. She was just able to curl her fingertips around Daniel’s lower pant leg, and she strained, sweating, until she’d pulled enough on it to bring him closer.
It was an awkward maneuver, but she finally managed to reach through the bars and untangle the noose until she could slip it off of his now-purple neck. Kneeling on the floor next to the bars, she flipped him over on his back and began pumping his chest up and down with both hands. The bars were too narrow to allow her head to squeeze through so she could breathe air into his lungs, so she kept pumping away. It was all she could do.
Please, please, please
. . .
Daniel coughed, his eyes opening wide.
Lisa scooped him up as best she could and sobbed openly, wrapping her arms around him through the bars, as he continued to gag and gasp for air. His back was to her, so she couldn’t see his face, but she didn’t care.
He was alive. She clung to him as tightly as she could.
After several minutes, he pulled himself free of her grasp, and she noted with relief the purplish pallor retreating from his cheeks.
“What . . . what happened?” he choked, using one hand to massage the raw ring around his neck.
“I don’t know!” Lisa cried. “There was an earthquake and I woke up and found you hanging by your neck!”
With tremendous effort, Daniel visibly swallowed, and the motion caused him great pain. He shook his head, eyes still huge.
“So, um . . .” Lisa sniffled. “I mean . . . you really didn’t—?”
Daniel was shocked. “
Of course not!
I fell asleep and the next thing I know I’m strung up by the neck!”
“Then someone tried to kill you . . .” Lisa said.
“ . . . again,” Daniel finished, and then he passed out.
Lisa clutched him tightly in her arms, swaying back and forth, powerless. Waiting for whoever had failed to return and finish them for good.
Payton stared at his glowing Ring, allowing the blinding light to pierce his eyes and refusing to close them. His oxygen was running out, and he was determined not to deny himself any sensation that remained before death seized him.
Lost in the shattering brightness, he felt suddenly aware of how ready he was to die. Nearly anxious. It was only strange that it was now so near. This was the first time he’d truly felt in mortal danger in years, and so it was the first time he’d considered the very real possibility of dying. Again.
Knowing all he’d done, all of the darkness in his life and the death dealt at his own hands, knowing the heartache he’d suffered and the love gained and lost . . . Considering it all, Payton welcomed death.
And cursed it, in equal measure.
He’d managed to find a tiny pocket of air to curl up in, between the collapsing rocks during the cave-in. His ultra-fast bursts of speed had helped him move from spot to spot as the boulders fell, until he was able to find a hole to wedge himself between, where he would be protected from the rest of the earthquake. But the earth had packed itself in too tightly around and above him, on every side. He was unharmed save for a few scrapes, but the rocks were too big to move, so now there was nothing left but to wait.
But then the Ring continued to glow brighter and brighter than it ever had before. It had temporarily blinded his eyes long before it began to fade, long before he first felt the strange sensation that there was something wrong with . . . everything. His skin, the air he breathed, the way his body moved—it all felt drastically different, as if the very nature of existence had changed.
He knew this feeling. He’d felt it once before. In another cave, far from here, nearly ten years ago . . .
And it was growing warmer. So very hot there, buried alive. Again.
He was still unable to see much when the vibrations began.
Payton craned his neck around as if trying to see the source of the movement, but realized how fruitless that was. Everything was rock and dirt. But soon he didn’t need to see, as the vibrations turned to blunt movement and he felt the rocks all around him rise up into the air.
His vision cleared and he staggered to his feet. He looked up to see every one of the boulders and stalactites and rubble that had crashed to the floor now hovering in the air only a few feet above him, all across the large cave where he’d slain several dozen Secretum soldiers. And he still couldn’t shake this feeling that reminded him of what it was like to be in that cave in France, on that awful day . . . on the day—
The day he died.
If anything in this world was capable of instilling fear into Payton, it was this sensation, because he recognized it for what it was. It wasn’t death that he feared; it was the memories that still haunted him from that defining event, the event that had changed his life forever. He had no regrets about the path his life had taken in the wake of his death and resuscitation, after Morgan’s betrayal and abandonment of him. But some minuscule part of him mourned the loss of the man who had died that day. He had been so different before . . . So different. It had been such a different time. A different life.
Slowly, Payton turned to face the doorway where Grant had disappeared—when was that,
hours
ago now? Only, the doorway wasn’t empty; Grant stood there once more, but now he was being tailed by an entourage that included Devlin, Payton’s old mentor.
What is this?
What does Grant think he’s—?
Payton froze.
He was a good fifty feet away from this unlikely group, but he knew as soon as Grant stepped inside the large cavernous room that whoever or whatever he was looking at . . . this was not Grant Borrows.
Or was it?
It looked like Grant. Up to a point, at least. But the eyes and the skin were wrong, and his expression . . . it was so devoid of emotion, so mechanical and lifeless . . .
Instinctively, his hand fell upon the hilt of his sheathed sword.
The
thing
that may or may not have been Grant noticed Payton’s reflex immediately. He thrust out his right hand in Payton’s direction, and Payton braced himself, but nothing happened.
“Grant,” he said, stepping forward, “what are you—?”
Payton’s body suddenly went rigid and his hand left his sword to rest easily at his side. His other arm did the same. Grant turned very intentionally away from him, ignoring him completely, and he began walking toward the opposite exit on the other side of the room that led back to the city above. The Secretum members followed behind.
Payton was alarmed to discover that his body was no longer obeying his directives. He wanted to draw his sword, to scream at Grant to snap out of whatever thrall he was held in. He wanted to send Devlin, who smiled subtly at him as he passed by, to a well-deserved grave.
But nothing happened. He merely stood there like a windup toy that had run out of juice. His mouth wouldn’t open, his muscles wouldn’t move, his eyes wouldn’t even blink.
Sweat ran off of him in sheets from the cave’s newfound heat. And something was wrong with the ground; it was changing colors, growing darker . . .