“InterWorld Base Town.” His tone still had no emotion at all.
“Oh. You could have told me that when you let me out of the cell. I wouldn’t have run.” He remained silent yet again, so I committed myself to learning my surroundings as we walked through the halls.
As before, the hallways were gray and colorless, floor-to-ceiling bars lining them at intervals. At first, all the cells looked empty; then I noticed odd shadows within them, some of them humanoid and others not, some moving and some sitting (or otherwise being still; some of them were so shapeless it was impossible to tell). I listened, but heard nothing. It was more than a little unnerving.
We walked through several hallways like that, my escort immediately behind me with his hand gripping my shirt, until we were once again beneath the pastel “sky.” There was no elevator this time. We simply walked through halls until we came to a larger room, better lit with that sky crawling across the ceiling. As far as I could tell, we’d walked in a straight line, yet somehow arrived in one of the upper floors. Unless the roof-window-sky-whatever was on the lower floors, too. I wasn’t sure.
The room was empty, and I took this opportunity to look around as we walked. I’d only been able to look in one direction the last time I was here, if it was even the same area. The walls looked almost like those of a nice hotel lobby; the room was circular, the walls a rosy beige color. Artwork hung on them, abstractly pretty scenes of ships at sea, lighthouses, birds in flight. I looked down, tracing the gold lines etched into the floor until I recognized the pattern as a nautical star. The theme seemed to make perfect sense, somehow—just as something else didn’t.
“Why send me back home, if Acacia told me it isn’t safe?”
“The council decided.”
“Are you on the council?”
“No.”
“Who is?”
“Councilors.”
His tone was still completely emotionless, the words somehow delivered from that impassive face, but I was pretty well certain he was being snide.
“So who are you?”
“Your guide. Watch your step.”
I glanced down; there was, in fact, a step into the next room, if it even was a room. The floor was completely black, to the point where I doubted my foot would come into contact with anything. It did, though, and it seemed somehow firmer than the marble I’d been standing on previously.
“Good luck, Joseph Harker.” His hand released my shirt, and I turned to look at him—and encountered only blackness. I put a hand out, and it brushed against a firm wall that had the texture of static. The room was compl
etely black, yet I could see my hand and arm as clearly as if it was broad daylight. I saw all the way to my shoes when I looked down, though nothing but sheer blackness surrounded me.
Sample acquired.
I wasn’t sure anyone had spoken, yet somehow the words hung in the silence.
Timestream found. Path mapping.
A small light appeared in my peripheral vision, then another, and another, until I was surrounded by a field of stars. Stars I recognized. Constellations I hadn’t seen in I didn’t even know how long. The Little and Big Dippers, Orion, Cassiopeia, the Lion. The North Star.
I didn’t realize I was smiling until they shifted, whirling and swirling around me until it was a constant stream of light, and then—and the feeling was familiar enough now that I recognized it—I fell through time.
The landing wasn’t as easy as before.
I mean, it hadn’t really been easy, what with the vomiting the first time and the dizziness and being held captive the second. Thing is, I’d stayed conscious for all that.
I don’t know how long I was out, or even why I was out in the first place. I just knew that my bed consisted of rocks, pebbles, and shards of glass, and I tasted blood in my mouth as I came to. My head ached like someone had it in a vise, and my vision was so blurry I could hardly see anything.
I slowly pushed myself to my hands and knees, then my feet. The smell of smoke hung in the air, and wherever I was was silent as the grave.
This wasn’t right. My guard hadn’t spoken all that much, but I did remember him saying I was going back to InterWorld. Was I not there yet? Did I have to Walk somewhere else first?
My vision was clearing, allowing me little details here and there. The sun was bright above me, which was not only unhelpful to both my headache and the watering of my eyes, it was outright betraying my mental image of the place when I’d smelled the smoke. I’d assumed it would be overcast, dark. There was no smoke anywhere, nor fire, but I felt ash covering my hands as I rubbed them together. I was in what must have once been a garden, a path of pebbles and sand (and ash and glass…) moving precisely through the twisted, blackened remains of bushes and trees.
Gravel crunched beneath my feet as I walked, slowly, taking everything in. Peering between the scorched limbs lining the path afforded me glimpses of long, rectangular boxes, sitting silently in the gardens. Long, silver boxes. The kind Jay had been sent away in, and Jerzy.
I started to run.