She and Avery had traded places; she was now standing over her wounded brother and using his sword to fend off attacks from Lady Indigo. There were several Walkers down here and there, some of them alone and some also being defended by their comrades.
If the Walkers hadn’t gotten here, we wouldn’t have stood a chance. Avery and Acacia wouldn’t have been able to free me by themselves. They had come, risking their lives, to save me. They were buying me time to run.
It wouldn’t help. Unless Acacia was able to defeat Lady Indigo where her brother had failed (I didn’t even know if “kill” was the right word; for all I knew, it might take more than that), Lord Dogknife would just use her to power FrostNight. He’d said so himself. It might not be as strong, but it would still continue. More worlds would be destroyed. All this fighting and all this death, and it was all for nothing.
I looked up, finding the perfect sphere sitting calm and beautiful amid the chaos, perhaps twenty steps in front of me. He comes for you, Lord Dogknife had said. It struck me suddenly, for the first time, that he hadn’t said it.
I couldn’t stop it. The words from when I’d first woken up in chains came back to me, said in a voice I couldn’t quite place. It was my voice, but not.
A sound reached my ears over all the chaos, like the white noise of a television or radio left on. As I tried to push myself to my feet, gaze locked on the floor beneath me, a pair of brown shoes stepped into my line of sight. I looked up, meeting the Professor’s static gaze.
“Running is useless, Walker,” he said. “You must know this by now. Why not accept your fate?” His voice was even and human sounding, but completely emotionless, like it was dialogue plugged into a computer. There was a kind of electronic quality to it, too, something that was too smooth, too contrived.
I ignored him, still struggling to stand. I felt dizzy and sick, like the floor was going to slide out from beneath me any moment. I cast around for a portal, didn’t sense one—but I did sense Hue, hovering worriedly nearby. Maybe he could make me a portal.
Hue, I thought, but my resolve weakened. He couldn’t hear me unless we were merged, or whatever it was he did, and anyway, the Professor was right: Running wasn’t the answer. Running wouldn’t solve anything.
I finally got to my feet, standing as tall as I could to look at the Professor. He regarded me critically, like a teacher waiting impatiently for an answer.
“The decision is yours, Harker,” he said. “Either accept your fate, as those have before you, or attempt to run. You may even make it a few steps before you are caught.”
As those have before you. The words reminded me of something else I’d heard him say when I’d been hooked up to the machine that had first powered FrostNight. You will fulfill your purpose and bring about the revolution of the world, he’d said, and Joaquim had struggled against his bonds as he realized his fate. No, he’d screamed. I don’t want to—
I remembered his face when I’d tried to help him, his dead eyes. I remembered the words I’d heard upon waking.
Isn’t this my destiny?
“Hue,” I said, and the little mudluff brightened. If he merged with me again, I’d be able to Walk anywhere. I could probably even find my way to TimeWatch itself, but I had a better idea.
Well, it wasn’t technically a better idea. In fact, it was probably the worst idea I’d ever had, and that was saying a lot.
I held out my hand to Hue and he came to perch on my palm. He seemed to sense what I wanted through the contact, and began to flow up my arm like liquid. The Professor’s eyes narrowed and he raised a hand, but I took a step toward him instead of away, and he paused.
“I know my purpose,” I told him. “It’s something that’s so much a part of me—of all of us—that nothing you do can shake it. Even when you boil us down to our very essence, or freeze us and keep us alive to help you Walk, we still know our purpose.”
Hue flowed over my body, over my face and my wounded eye. “Our purpose is to stop you,” I said. “And not even death will take that from us.”
And with that, I Walked—but not to the In-Between, or even sideways to a parallel world. I Walked exactly twenty steps forward, reappearing in front of the perfect silver and blue sphere. As I looked back, the Professor’s static eyes met mine, and the corners of his mouth tilted up in the barest hint of pleasure. I heard Acacia scream my name again, and Joeb. I saw J/O and Jai, lying still by the giant, smoking computer. Jakon and Josef were taking on Lord Dogknife, and Jo had flown over to help Acacia again. The floor was littered with Binary clones and Walkers alike, and FrostNight waited in front of me, peaceful and hungry and alone.
I turned my back on the chaos, and started forward. Like going off the diving board into the deep end, I took a running start and jumped, plunging headfirst into the heart of FrostNight.
Isn’t this my destiny?
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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HAVE YOU COME TO gloat?
As before, the words just seemed to hang in the air, unspoken but somehow still present. I opened my eyes—both of them, and I felt no pain—and looked around, but at first there was nothing to see. There was nothing but soft light, pale and colorless, and what looked like static in the distance.
“Where am I?” I asked. I looked down at my hands and my body.
The eye of the storm.
I recognized the cloth covering my arms, and it wasn’t what I’d been wearing when I went in. It was a green and black hoodie; my favorite hoodie, the one I’d been wearing when I Walked for the first time. I’d forgotten it at home—the home that was now gone—when I’d packed up some of my things and left the life I knew forever.