The City of Mirrors (The Passage 3)

You will know me as Zero. Such is the name that history has bestowed upon me. Zero the Destroyer, Great Devourer of the World. That this history shall never be written is a circumstance of ontological debate. What becomes of the past when there is no man to record it? I died and then was brought to life, the oldest tale there is. I arose from the dead, and what did I behold? I was in a room of the bluest light—pure blue, cerulean blue, the blue the sky would be if it were married to the sea. My arms, legs, even my head were bound; I was a captive in that place. Scattered images lit my mind, flashes of light and color that refused to gather into meaning. My body was humming. That is the only word. I was to learn that I had just emerged from the final stages of my transformation. I had yet to see my body, being inside it.

Tim, can you hear me?

A voice, coming from everywhere and nowhere. Was I dead? Was this the voice of God, addressing me? Perhaps the life I’d lived had been not so worthy, and things had gone the other way.

Tim, if you can hear me, lift a hand.

This did not seem too much for God, any god, to ask.

That’s it. Now the other one. Excellent. Well done, Tim.

You know this voice, I said to myself. You are not dead; it is the voice of a human being, like you. A man who calls you by name, who says “well done.”

That’s it. Just breathe. You’re doing fine.

The nature of the situation was becoming clear. I had been ill in some manner. Perhaps I had suffered seizures; that would explain the restraints. I could not yet recall the circumstances, how I had come to be in this place. The voice was the key. If I could identify its owner, all would be revealed.

I’m going to undo the straps now, okay?

I felt a release of pressure; triggered by some remote mechanism, my bindings had surrendered their hold.

Can you sit up, Tim? Can you do that for me?

It was also true that, whatever my ailment was, the worst had passed. I did not feel ill—quite the contrary. The humming sensation, which originated in my chest, had enlarged to an orchestral, whole-body vibrato, as if all the molecules of my anatomy were playing a single note. The sensation was deeply, almost sexually pleasurable. My loins, the tips of my toes, even the roots of my hair—never had I experienced anything so exquisite.

A second voice, deeper than the first: Dr. Fanning, I’m Colonel Sykes.

Sykes. Did I know a man named Sykes?

Can you hear us? Do you know where you are?

A hole had opened inside me. Not a hole: a maw. I was hungry. Deeply, madly hungry. Mine was the appetite not of a human being but of an animal. A hunger of claws and teeth, of burrowing in, of soft flesh beneath the jaws and hot juices exploding upon the palate.

Tim, you’ve got us pretty worried in here. Talk to me, buddy.

And just like that the gates of memory opened, releasing a flood. The rain forest, with its steamy air and dense green canopy full of hooting animals; the stickiness of my skin and the omnipresent swarm of insects around my face; the soldiers, scanning the trees with their rifles as we walked, their faces streaked with jungle paint; the statues, manlike figures of monstrous form, warning us away even as they called us forward, summoning us deeper into the heart of this vile place; the bats.

They’d come at night, swarming our encampment. Bats by the hundreds, the thousands, the ten thousands, a flapping multitude. They blotted out the heavens. They took the sky by storm. The gates of hell had opened and this was its disgorgement, its black vomitus. They seemed not to fly but to swim, moving in organized waves, like a school of airborne fish. They fell upon us, all wings and teeth and vicious little squeaks of joy. I remembered the shots, the screams. I was in a place of blue light and a voice that knew my name but in my mind I was running for the river. I saw a woman, writhing on the banks. Her name was Claudia; she was one of us. The bats had covered her like a cloak. Imagine it, the horror. Almost no part of her was visible. She twitched in a demonic dance of agony. In truth, my first instinct was to do nothing. I did not possess the heart of a hero. Yet sometimes we discover things about ourselves we never knew. I took two great leaps and tackled her, sending the two of us plunging into the fetid jungle water. I felt the hot stab of the bats’ teeth in the flesh of my arms and neck. The water boiled with blood. Such was their fury that even the water did not deter them; they would feed upon us even as they drowned. I locked Claudia’s neck in my elbow and dove down, though I knew this would come to nothing; the woman was already dead.

I remembered all these things, and then one more. I remembered a man’s face. It hovered above me, framed by jungle sky. I was insensate, burning with fever. The air around me throbbed with the din of the helicopter’s blades. The man was yelling something. I tried to focus on his mouth. It was alive, he was saying—my friend, Jonas Lear, was saying—it was alive, it was alive, it was alive…