“You’re telling me that those things used to be… people?”
Ryan nodded. “They appear whenever the ceremony is active and the city could theoretically be reached. They protect this place. They slaughter anyone they find. The stone eggs were created to allow a few select individuals safe passage back home. Anyone else is fair game.”
Through the window, the creature in Stanley’s room was finished with its work. It rose and tore back out into the dark,SHRIEKINGloud enough to make Ethan’s mind stutter, even after hearing the sound so many times.
Ethan said, “You seem to know a lot about those things.”
Ryan raised his right hand, revealing the strange implement he held. It was a staff—if you could call it that—with a wicked curved blade at its tip. Bone white. Vaguely organic.
The man flicked his wrist, and the long claw at the end of the weapon curved open wider, like a bird stretching its talons.
A faint echo seemed to come from the blade as it moved. A familiarSHRIEK.
“I’ve had some practice with them,” Ryan said.
Ethan looked at Ryan’s clothes, his scars, his blade. “You look like you’ve been to a war.”
“I’ve been looking for Penelope.” This wasn’t, Ethan noticed, a denial. The man gestured to the streets, the rows of buildings with their blank windows. “You can go through one gap and come out another. Don’t try it for yourself. You never know where you’ll end up.”
“How long have you been doing this?”
Ryan adjusted a strap on his strange garment, rubbed a finger on what looked like a bloodstain. His one eye seemed afraid to look at Ethan. “You really don’t want to know.”
At the city’s center, the column of silver light let out another terrible moan. Ryan said casually, “Move.” Ethan started running almost before he realized the danger he was in. The great building in which he’d just watched Stanley Holiday meet his maker collapsed behind him, releasing a nasty barrage of cracked stone. Ethan took a nick behind his ear.
That could have been much worse.
But when Ethan turned back to thank Ryan, the man was already standing at another building’s window. A moment ago, Ethan would have sworn that window was nothing more than a plain hole in a stone wall. Now, through its stone frame, he saw a strange wasteland. A jagged ridge of bony mountains. A black sky. A single flame on the horizon—redder than any fire Ethan had ever known.
The sight scared Ethan in a way he could never explain. “Is that… the future?”
“A possible future. One of many, if you don’t figure out how to deal with Te’lo’hi. Or Jack Allen.” Ryan braced a hand on the window’s frame, preparing to leave.
“Wait a second—come with me. I’ll need your help. He—”
“I’ll catch up with you later.” Ryan nodded over Ethan’s shoulder. “You should run.”
Ethan turned back just in time to see the road on which he’d walked suddenly crack and split and cave in, crumbling away into a coursing stream of pale silver light. The energy in the air grew even hotter, sparking on his clothes, almost like his shirt was trying to ignite.
The road kept crumbling a few feet at a time, heading Ethan’s way. No time to think. He turned, sprinted, and saw that Ryan was long gone, the window onto the lonely world with the bloodred fire now empty of anything at all.
KYLA
For the life of her, Kyla could not figure out Sarah Powers. A few minutes ago, the woman had been practically catatonic, only walking under duress and silent as a stone. Now, she was peering through the windows of these strange buildings and muttering, “They used cutlery. Who would have guessed?”
Kyla glanced through the window. The inside resembled a dining room: a low table sunk into the floor, scattered with square dishes and knives and, yes, something that looked like a fork.
“This civilization was centuries ahead of their time.” Sarah pointed at a recessed point in the building’s ceiling, which glowed with a faint silver light. “Hundreds upon hundreds of years old, but they had indoor lighting. Water. Architecture. Why would they just leave?”
Kyla sniffed the air; that thrumming pulse of energy was burning her nose. “You’re the physicist. We’re in a nuclear reactor that’s trying to go critical. You think anyone could have survived in this place even if they’d wanted—”
Another moan came from the silver light, so loud Kyla and Sarah both fell to their knees and slapped their hands over their ears. The ground trembled, sending cracks rippling through the buildings around them. Chunks of rock rained down from the sky. As her hearing returned, Kyla heard the stone walls around them groan, like they were on the verge of collapsing.
The girls froze, barely daring to breath. This entire block—hell, half the city—seemed ready to crumble on top of them.
Then through the very window they’d just been staring at, Fernanda stepped out, clutching a child in her arms. She woman looked over her shoulder at the room she’d left behind—were those corpses Kyla saw, flattened and stacked like red Sheetrock?—and said, “The mirror let us through. Just as I thought.”
Kyla had never seen Fernanda like this. For once, the woman didn’t look poised and haughty and uptight. She didn’t look anxious,or desperately proud, or scared. She was calm. She was ready for whatever was coming.
