Chapter 10
Jana could see some of the connections that Nicole had been working on flicker and collapse as she struggled to absorb what Jana had said.
“Shit.” Nicole said, catching a few more connections before they too could break. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know!” Jana was trying to keep the panic out of her voice, “We don’t even know for sure what the vortex actually is.”
“I think I can help clear that up.”
The voice was quiet, a normal speaking volume, but Jana and Nicole reacted like a cannon had just gone off inside the library. They both jumped, their muscles acting without coordination in response to the realization that they were not alone.
Across the gap that held the sculpture, from out of the darkness, a figure emerged, striding slowly forward and stopping only at the railing that guarded the hole in the floor, where he rested his hands.
“Bryce?” Jana’s shock restricted her vocabulary to yelling that single word.
“Hello Jana, I’d like to say it is good to see you again, but I try not to lie to my constituents.”
Jana didn’t respond and Nicole kept her eyes closed, working as hard as she could to continue the infection process.
“Nicole!” She twitched and lost a few connections when Bryce shouted her name. “It is good to finally be meeting you, even if I wish it were under less… combative circumstances. I followed your career you know, it was such a shame what happened. I could help you out, when I become governor, get your old job back, maybe even streamline some court cases for you, make sure the real bad guys get put away.”
Nicole didn’t respond to Bryce, but Jana could see the faint connection between them getting brighter as he continued to speak.
“If you really wanted, I could probably get you a position in a bigger city, get a change of scenery, some more interesting cases. You see, I’m planning to do some pretty aggressive networking once I’m in office. I’m sure that once my influence expands I’ll be able to get you all the help you could want.”
Something was wrong. If Bryce was actually the center of the vortex he should look like a star, with millions of connections radiating off of him. Jana could see his threads, expanding from his chest. There were a lot, but not the amount she had seen a minute ago, carrying the volume of information she had witnessed in her dream. As Bryce continued to try and distract Nicole, Jana focused her Sight, letting her view of the physical world blur. She looked through Bryce and saw a group of lines extending straight out of his back, previously hidden by his body. These lines sprouted not just from his chest but from his hands and feet, his arms and legs. A group sprouted from his head, connecting to his mouth and eyes, drilling into his brain. These body-lines all extended into the darkness of the shelves at the back of the library, disappearing into a gloom that effected even the glowing lines.
Jana frowned, she was still new to this but she was confident that a lack of light shouldn’t affect her ability to see the threads. She connected to one of Bryce’s body-lines and willed the end of the connection to drift backward into the gloom. As the end passed out of her sight the line flickered and then disappeared, the connection destroyed. Before she could try again Bryce surprised her by suddenly going silent, cutting off his speech in the middle of a sentence. As his voice died Jana could hear laughter. It was faint but growing louder, and it was coming from the unnatural darkness.
Jana refocused her regular vision just in time to see a pale shape emerge from the shelves on the other side of the gap. As the figure left the books behind she could see that he was the end point for all of the body-lines she had been trying to investigate. The lines dimmed dramatically and Bryce went limp, standing with his head against his chest and his arms hanging at his side, she wouldn’t have been surprised to see him drooling.
“I was wondering how long you were going to let him monologue!” The figure said, sounding like they were trying not to continue laughing. The voice was vaguely familiar to Jana. “Uh oh, Nicole! Better work fast, only thirty seconds left to kill me!”
The figure stepped into the pool of moonlight coming through the roof and Jana instantly remembered why the voice was so familiar. Of course it was, she had already been primed by seeing Bryce, and there was only one person who was always by his side.
“Only twenty seconds left!” James Moon said, smiling wildly, showing more emotion than Jana had ever seen his face display. She knew Nicole wasn’t that close to being done, and though she had no idea what Bryce’s campaign manager planned to do when his timer ran out Jana knew she had to at least try to distract him.
“James!” She yelled. He turned his head towards her. Jana could see the reflection of the sculpture in his sunglasses, each lens holding a miniature version of the network of metal and glass.
“Jana!” The unremarkable man turned to address her. “I take back what I, sorry, I mean what Bryce, said earlier. I am glad to see you. Ever since you murdered those two gentlemen and fled the city, leaving me on clean up duty, I’ve been a little worried that you might return and try to pull a… stunt like this. But now, once you fail, I can keep you close by, and keep your shenanigans to a minimum.”
Jana tried to think of a response, something to delay him, to distract him, but the word ‘murdered’ rang in her ears and made it hard to think. Before she could come up with something James clapped his hands and turned back to Nicole. “Looks like time’s up!” He said, smile even wider than before. “And thank you, ladies, for bringing this dangerous artifact to my attention. I’ll make sure to dispose of it safely.”
He pointed a finger at the space above the sculpture and a scattered cone of bright lines erupted from the end of it, each one terminating where one of the wires holding the sculpture connected to the ceiling. Jana focused her sight and could see that the lines were colored like weakness, the same as the lines Nicole had used to break the lock on the library door, but much, much stronger. She looked at the points on the ceiling and zoomed in. Focusing on a single one of the glowing spots, she could see that James was disrupting the connections within the wires themselves, drawing energy away from the links between individual molecules.
After only a few seconds the wires started to break, each one snapping back with a deafening crack when the tension was released. The loose wires whipped violently against the sculpture, shattering glass and getting tangled in the steel bars. As more snapped, the sculpture jerked down suddenly, finding a new position to rest at the end of fewer wires. Then it happened again, the sculpture twisting and free-falling a foot before stopping suddenly enough to snap a few more of the weakened lines.
The assembly quickly passed the point where the mass became too great for even the unaffected wires to hold and the rest of them started snapping in rapid succession. The library filled with the overlapping gunshot cracks of breaking wires and the howling of steel bars being wrenched in two. The sculpture fell through the hole in the floor, tearing itself to pieces as it went. The cacophony of it hitting the ground a story below was joined by Nicole’s scream of rage and pain as the pattern of the sculpture was completely destroyed. She hadn’t infected the city in time.
Jana jumped to Nicole’s side and caught her as she collapsed. Her body was limp in Jana’s arms, the last-minute attempt to finish connecting the prion had left her temporarily too exhausted to even keep her eyes open. Jana rocked back and forth where she sat, the hand not supporting Nicole’s head stroking her hair. She looked past her sweat-soaked face at the connections anchored in her body. Most of them looked dimmer than they had before, though Jana wasn’t experienced enough to know if that was because she was exhausted or the result of manipulating so many connections at once. Maybe reduced strength was a necessary side effect of increased volume?
Despite her exhaustion, there were two connections that were actually getting stronger. Jana was feeding her connection to Nicole. She was pushing every positive emotion she could think of into the thread between them, supporting her where words and touch couldn’t. The other connection growing in power was the line between Nicole and James. It was bright with the colors of anger and fear, and Jana could see that it was Nicole who was feeding it, though not artificially. Her feelings towards him were simply that strong. As she watched the line, Jana noticed that it was moving, completing a journey that she had missed before. The line now no longer extended out over the gap in the floor but instead pointed sideways, extending through Jana’s shoulder. She turned her head slowly and followed the glowing string to its other end.
“I think that it’s time to go.” James was leaning casually against the railing, a few feet to Jana’s right. “Bryce can carry Ms. Brooks, I’m sure he won’t mind. Right?” Bryce, standing slack jawed behind James, shook his head slowly. He walked towards the two women and crouched down in front of them, reaching out to take Nicole.
“No!” Jana yelled, using her free hand to push Bryce’s away from them. “Don’t touch her!” Though Bryce barely seemed to register the contact, the shout had disturbed Nicole’s unnatural sleep, and she was moving, slowly extricating herself from Jana’s grasp.
“I. Can. Walk.” Nicole huffed each word in between bouts of slow and deliberate movement, transferring herself from crawling, then kneeling, then, with support from Jana, standing. “Asshole.” She added, spitting on the floor at James’ feet with enough venom that Jana was surprised the carpet didn’t smoke where the saliva landed.
“Very well.” James said, “Though I hope you’ll understand if Bryce walks with you, I can’t have you running off and getting up to anymore… disruptions.”
James started walking, his body-lines trailing behind him to Bryce where he remained next to Jana and Nicole. They didn’t move until Bryce shoved them both from behind, setting them stumbling into a slow trudge at James’ heels.
They walked in silence, James standing tall, Jana and Nicole bent under the weight of Nicole’s exhaustion. A burden that, though it became lighter by the minute, was still heavy. Jana endured the silence for as long as she could, which was about half way to the exit.
“Why.” She asked the silhouette in front of them, trying to keep her voice steady. “Why are you helping Gravewater? If you can see the connections, you must know that it’s wrong. That it’s hurting people, making them crazy.”
James didn’t stop walking or even turn around when he answered. “Jana, darling, you’ve got it all wrong. I am not helping the city.” He paused and, raising his arms, let a fraction of the swirling connections that he had been bending around Jana and Nicole wash over them, blinding their Sight with the volume and intensity of the vortex. After a moment, he lowered his arms, isolating them from the storm again, and plunging them into relative darkness and silence. Jana felt like she had been pulled from a forest fire and thrown into a dark lake, such was the contrast. She heard James’ next words through that water, muffled and quiet, but just as terrifying.
“I am the city.”