Нил Гейман – Eternity’s Wheel (страница 4)

“Joseph?” Mr. Dimas asked, pausing as he reached over to pick up the wrist brace.

“I’m fine,” I lied, taking another drink of water. “Long story short, we thought Joaquim was one of us, but he wasn’t. He was a clone, like the rutabagas Binary makes, but infused with souls and powered by HEX’s magic. That was when we discovered HEX and Binary were working together.” I shook my head, the weight of it all descending upon me once again. The only thing that had given InterWorld a fighting chance was HEX and Binary’s war with each other. Now that they’d called a truce, however temporary it might be, they’d be turning all their focus on us.

“Infused with souls?” Mr. Dimas repeated, looking at me seriously.

“Yeah,” I said bleakly. “HEX and Binary keep the souls of any Walker they catch. Apparently, that’s the source of our power, the very essence of what we are. They use us to power their ships, so they can travel between dimensions as well.”

“So they made a clone of you.”

“Using Jay’s blood from where he’d died.”

“And powered him with …”

“The souls of dead Walkers.”

“Okay,” he said, looking grim. He shook his head. “So he wasn’t really one of you.”

“No. He was sabotaging InterWorld from within. He caused a rockslide during a training mission that injured a bunch of us”—I gestured to my shoulder—“and killed a friend of mine. His name was Jerzy.”

“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Dimas. I nodded.

“Hex and Binary were using Joaquim to try and power a … HEX called it FrostNight. It … was basically created to restart the universe. So they could make it into whatever they wanted.”

Mr. Dimas looked like he was having trouble grasping this. I didn’t blame him. “Restart the universe?”

“Or the Multiverse, depending on how far they got. I … Acacia and I tried to stop it, but …”

“Did you?”

“I—I can’t assume we did.”

“I imagine we’d know if you hadn’t. Or, perhaps we wouldn’t know, but we also wouldn’t be here?”

“Maybe. I don’t know how fast it moves, or … It’s a soliton, which means it will maintain a continuous speed without losing momentum or energy … or, that’s what they told me. So it would still take a while to erase everything.”

“I see. How did you try to stop it, or is that too complicated?”

“They were trying to use Joaquim and me,” I admitted, holding up my other hand. The skin around my wrist was still chafed raw from where I’d gotten out of the restraints. “I got out, with Acacia’s help,” I added quickly, seeing he was about to ask. I didn’t want to tell him the truth: that while Acacia had helped me, it hadn’t been her who’d broken the machine. It had been me. Thousands of me, scattered through the air like fireflies …

I’d used the souls. I’d called them to me, added their power to mine, and directed them to do as I wished. I still wasn’t sure if the ends had justified the means, or if it made me just like the monsters I fought against.

“So you think, without you, it may not have been powered completely?”

“Maybe, but like I said, I can’t assume that.”

Mr. Dimas nodded again. “What happened after you got out?”

“We tried to go back to InterWorld, but we couldn’t get there. The Old Man had figured out Joaquim’s energy drain on the ship, and thrown the engines into overdrive to get away. We were waiting for our ship to pick us up when we saw it warp away, followed by a HEX ship. It’s … that HEX found InterWorld Base Town is …”

“Bad, I imagine?”

“Very bad.” I watched as he secured the wrist brace around my hand. It hurt, but I relaxed immediately now that I didn’t have to concentrate on trying not to move it too much. “InterWorld might be able to stay ahead of the HEX ship, but they’re gonna have to keep running, which means they’re essentially trapped. They can’t stop, not even for a second.”

“Let me see if I have anything for that burn on your wrist and the one on your side.” Mr. Dimas stood, leaving me in momentary confusion. What burn on my side? I shifted, finding the rough texture along my skin, and the pain that came with it. Right … It was from J/O’s laser. That was something I’d left out of the retelling. My teammate J/O, a cyborg version of me, had been turned against us by a Binary virus. Acacia had saved me from him, too, left him wandering through time looking for us. …

“He wasn’t on the ship,” I said suddenly, as Mr. Dimas sat back down across from me.

“Who wasn’t?”

“J/O. A teammate of mine, he’s a cyborg me,” I explained, only half listening to what I was saying. My brain was moving too fast for my mouth. “He’d been infected by a Binary virus and was working with Joaquim. He attacked me—that’s where I got the burn on my side from his laser cannon—but Acacia threw us through time and he couldn’t find us … but that means he wasn’t on Base Town when they had to punch it, he must have been left behind. He’s still out there somewhere—” I stopped, not wanting to alarm him, but the sentence continued on in my head. He could come find me. He could come here.

“I have to go,” I said, but Mr. Dimas was shaking his head.

“Not with your injuries,” he said firmly, putting a hand on my fractured shoulder when I tried to stand up. I winced, and he gave me a look that said see? “You can barely walk, and what little medical attention I’ve given you won’t help much unless you sleep and heal.”

“You might be in danger,” I tried.

“You are in danger, and you’re not going to get out of it without dying unless you rest, not to mention eat.” He fixed me with a stern look over the top of his glasses, the look I remembered from sitting in his classroom.

My stomach gave a loud growl just then, as if to punctuate his sentence. I glanced down, betrayed, and felt heat rise to my face. “Okay,” I said quietly, making the decision to leave as soon as I’d eaten. I wasn’t going to put him in more danger than I already had, and besides, I had things to do. My army wasn’t going to gather itself.

“Good,” he said, straightening up. “Now. Important question: What do you want to eat?”

“I—” I stopped, it suddenly occurring to me that I could have anything I wanted. InterWorld kept us fed, of course; protein bars and enhanced vitamin water, very nutritious and not at all delicious. But I was home now, back on my world, and I could have anything. “Pizza,” I said. I know it’s cliché, but cut me some slack—I’m a teenage boy. What would you have asked for? Broccoli?

“I’m not surprised. What do you want on it?”

“Pepperoni and broccoli,” I said. Shut up, it actually sounded good.

Mr. Dimas left to get the pizza (“I’ll go pick it up,” he’d said, “and you’d better be here when I get back, Joseph. I mean it.”) and I relaxed back on the couch again, seriously considering passing out. Instead I forced my mind into some semblance of meditation. It was the best I could do right then; I was still exhausted and hurting and worried, and every passing car or creak of the house settling made me jump.

Even with all my injuries and fears and concerns, I couldn’t stop thinking about Acacia. I hadn’t gotten to that part of the story in my retelling to Mr. Dimas, of how we’d been standing together watching the HEX ship stalk its InterWorld prey, and Lord Dogknife had attacked from out of nowhere. … She hadn’t even seen him coming. I didn’t know what he’d done to her, except that the second time he’d knocked her down, his claws were slick with blood and she hadn’t gotten back up.

I remembered her expression just before we’d been attacked. Most of my memories of her were like that, actually, moments of action frozen in time. I remembered her grinning at me a second before the sound of laser fire filled the air when J/O had found us; I remembered the way her face had been tilted toward mine before Lord Dogknife had attacked. I leaned back against the couch, remembering how she and I had sat back-to-back in a moment of respite, both of us injured, talking strategy and keeping each other going. I wondered if our friendship (relationship?) would be any different if we hadn’t formed the majority of it while running for our lives.

Most of all, I wondered where she was now. I didn’t know if she’d vanished of her own volition or if Lord Dogknife had sent her away or if she’d been rescued. I didn’t know what the chances of seeing her again were, and I wondered if I ever would at all.

The rest of the night went by in a daze. I ate five slices of pizza and downed three bottles of water, as well as two more painkillers. Mr. Dimas had tended my injuries, fed me, and let me use his shower. He gave me his guest room (after making sure I wasn’t going to bleed on anything) and made me promise not to leave without telling him. I finally collapsed into bed around nine, still dizzy from the whirlwind of events.

I remember that the food tasted good, and I remember enjoying it, but I was hard-pressed to remember what it had actually tasted like. My body was working overtime trying to heal, and in order to do that, it had to make me sleep.

I was afraid to. I’m not gonna lie, I’ve seen things that would give the devil himself nightmares (if he even existed anywhere; that kind of theology was something we’d never really gotten into in basic studies), and I’d come through the other side just fine. Now, though … not only was I afraid of the dreams I might have, I was afraid of something coming to find me. I was afraid of being so exhausted that I’d sleep right through something breaking in and hurting Mr. Dimas before it ever even got to me.