39. Zeke
Thirty-Nine
Zeke
I carved an X in the door closest to me. The lessons of my past, the fresh memory of my mom, recoiled in horror at the sight of me defacing a space that wasn't mine. But I'd been trapped here without my permission and that wasn't cool.
Mark in place, I ran until my legs ached and my lungs burned. It didn't matter how hard I pushed, every other door was the one with my X on it. I collapsed with my back to a nearby wall, gasping for breath. I wasn't in a hallway that went on forever, I was in one that looped.
Somehow that was worse, because it meant there literally was no end. Now I knew the three doors were the same doors, one next to the marked door and the third across from them, it was easy to eliminate which I'd tried.
I turned the doorknob of one. Locked . The other two yielded the same result. Slamming my shoulder into one over and over...
And over. And over...
Didn't yield a result.
The attic was above my head, the cord hanging down. I yanked on the ladder stairs, and climbed up again. Memories surged back as strong as when I'd appeared here. My childhood. My mother explaining which boxes held my father's things. It all rang in my thoughts as if I'd lived it moments ago.
I ignored it all and strode to the window at the end of the room. What was wrong with the outside world? The sun hadn't moved, but it wouldn't have. I'd only been in here a few minutes.
There was no depth to what I saw, and the perspective didn't change as I got closer. I still saw housetops stretched out in front of me, despite looking down. I should see a tree beneath the attic window. Instead, this was like someone had stuck a photo--the most high-def photo ever--to the other side of the glass.
I tried to raise the window, and it wouldn't budge. Not even a hint of movement. Unlocking the latch didn't yield a different result. It was more impassable than the doors downstairs.
As I tried to search the boxes, I didn't have any more luck. Aside from the one in my memory, they were all empty.
"I don't know what you want me to do next," I muttered to the empty air.
The lighting in the room changed, because the image in the window shifted. My memories did as well, sliding away from childhood and toward more painful thoughts.
Fuck this. I climbed out of the attic, and found myself in the hallway again. This was such bullshit. "You're cheating ," I shouted my frustration into the air.
A piece of paper fluttered from somewhere above my head, following a random and lazy path. I snatched it out of the air.
This isn't me, it's you . The words flowed in stark ink across torn parchment.
"Fuck you." My mind was already whirring though. If this was my doing, could I change my environment? There was nothing to do in the current one.
I need a door that opens . I visualized the hell out of the idea.
Nothing around me changed. Trying the current not-exits yielded the same results as before, as did climbing into the attic and checking the window.
What did I know how to do? Shoot things. I wouldn't fire on people unless I had to, but locks and doors were viable targets.
Except that I didn't have my gun. I had the pocket knife I'd used to carve on the door. A short while later, I proved it wasn't going to help me force any locks or pry anything open. If the marks I created held power, could I make one here?
Was there a rune for let me the fuck out?
As the question passed through my mind, several images followed. A jumble of straight lines, and whispered words I didn't understand. The cascade flooded my thoughts.
And then it stopped. Perthro, the sound whispered in my ears, along with the image of a horizontal line with a wide V up top and the same, but upside down, on the bottom. Like a cup rolling dice .
Why would I think that?
It didn't matter. The runes hadn't been a mistake yet. I wasn't sure they did any good most of the time, but as far as I could tell, they never brought the bad. I was willing to take my chances with the unknown I knew. I scratched the mark into a different door than the one with the X . As I finished, a voice came from behind me, but it wasn't nearby. It was faint and distant, and impossible to make out the words.
Where was it coming from? As I turned to locate the source, a flash of movement caught my eye, and I spun in time to see a glimpse of dark hair that reminded me of Diego, and a flash of blond so pale it was nearly white.
Then both were gone. Were they ghosts?
I was trapped in a mind maze by a siren and may or may not be influencing my surroundings without knowing it; ghosts shouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility.
This felt more like I'd witnessed something that hadn't happened yet.
What an odd thought.
" Why won't you take me seriously ?"
Azzie?
I whirled so fast toward her frustration, the room spun. Like before, a flash of color caught my eye—a glimpse of familiar red hair—before the sight vanished. It wasn’t as if Azzie had walked into one of the rooms, though. It was more like she was a projection, overlaid with the space I occupied, that faded into nothing.
Bring her back . I pushed the thought both in and out, willing it to happen until the words meant nothing, but the vision didn’t emerge again.
“ Hello ?” Unlike the other voices this one was solid. Did Davyn’s shout come from the other side of the door I put the rune on?
It didn't matter that I'd tried all three doors many times, I reached for it again. Before I could twist the knob, a force from the other side pushed it toward me.
My pulse hammered in my ears, and I jumped back before the door could hit me.
The first woman who stepped out was familiar. The platinum blond hair was unique, but so were the circumstances we'd met under. Callie was with another woman who had long black hair, sensual curves, and was she glowing? Only faintly.
"Hey. How did you get in here?" I'd be polite in a moment, after I got the important questions out of the way.
Neither of them so much as glanced in my direction.
" Hey ." My shout echoed off the walls, and rebounded at me.
They were talking to each other, but their words were faint and distant. Too indistinct for me to make out.
I reached for Callie's arm, and my hand passed through her as the pair vanished.
Before I could process, the door--which no one had closed, but which was somehow shut--opened again.
"Thank Creation we found you." Azzie was standing immediately next to me. "We have to go now."
"Yes. Christ yes. Let's go." As the last syllables fell past my lips, I realized she wasn't looking at me. "Azzie."
She was looking at Callie and the brunette, who had just stepped into the hallway again.
I snapped my fingers in front of Azzie's face. She remained focused on them.
Azzie had wings. Beautiful and golden, like those I'd seen in my mind when I drew her tattoo.
The dim lighting in the hallway glinted off the metal of her armor. The chainmail hugged her torso, and there was no padding or other armor underneath. If that wasn't impractical enough, the skull pauldrons would make the armor one-hundred percent costume.
It didn't matter because she was stunning.
Had she ascended?
Azzie, Callie, and the brunette vanished.
Was I dead? This was purgatory, filled with...
Things I'd never seen before?
This couldn't be purgatory. Mom had me baptized as a baby. Also, Finn said purgatory wasn't real.
A slip of paper appeared in mid air and floated down to me. At least that was becoming familiar. Finn told you a lot of things that aren't real. This isn't purgatory though.
Great. If the mysterious force could read my mind, maybe I was going insane.
Nah , I couldn't be so lucky.
There was someone standing next to me again, but it was a man with the same platinum blond hair as Callie. He was familiar, but not because I'd met him before. Something about him tugged my mind toward him.
Callie and the brunette woman stepped out of the door again, and Callie frowned. "Do you feel that?"
The man looked directly at me. "Yes."
Holy shit. "Hi. Hey. Where are we?" I said.
The man was looking through me more than at me, and he reached out.
I extended my hand as well. His passed through mine, but electricity sizzled over my skin and the hairs on the back of my arm stood on end. Another scene overlapped this one.
Unlike everything I’d seen this looked like a different room. Finn sat in a booth in what looked like a bar, with Lugh across from him.
“Don’t fuck this up,” Finn said.
“She was going to be paranoid about me regardless.” Lugh was as laid back as when we’d met him at Enid’s.
When was this?
It was difficult to make out details, but it looked like both men wore the same clothing as the day we met Enid.
“Besides, I was planting the next seed with Enid.” Lugh’s words could be a coincidence, but they felt like confirmation about my guess as to the timeline.
“What seed is that?” Finn sounded irritated. Skeptical.
“She’s going to meet a siren.”
She?
Azzie.
“If she survives, she’ll move on to the next obstacle, and if she doesn’t…” Was Lugh frowning? “If she doesn’t, then she wouldn’t make a good vessel, and I’ll move on to the next one. Regardless, you and your Potential get what you want.”
Another spark zinged through me, and this one burned. Callie and the two people she was with vanished, and so did the vision of Finn and Lugh.
“Bring it back.” Not as if asking would do me any good. They were gone.
The entire room around me wobbled, not under my feet but in my vision, and I was in the main lodge of Astrid's retreat. Despite me never being here, and only hearing her and Diego talk about it, I knew without question where I was.
Except I wasn't. The walls glitched, and I was in a farmhouse. Mom and I used to stay here when I was a kid, and she'd take me on survival trips. Except the furniture was covered with dusty sheets, and--
My head ached. What the fuck?
I was looking at myself on the floor next to Azzie. Other me was wrapped up in her under a sheet, both of us--them--very obviously naked.
Someone knocked.
I was in a forge I'd never seen before, and a spear head lay on the work table next to me. I reached for it.
Focus . It whispered in my mind the way Azzie's sword did. The way the ax from Loki had.
What the actual, living, breathing Hell?