Chapter 41

  Jimothy Whyte

  The power of the night, the press of the storm,

  The post of the foe;

  Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,

  Yet, the strong man must go.

  - Robert Browning, “ Prospice”

  Jimothy was starting to have doubts about the Line. He was pretty sure now that it was wrong about the Narrative. The stuff there was real. Niri had been real. He had really been knocked out by something after the Lockbreaker landed. And his friends were really in danger a lot of time, and so was he. He worried about that as he walked. He didn’t have to think very hard to carry Elizabeth on her bed of light, and it also wasn’t a problem to make holes in walls or floors in order to follow the Line.

  It was there on the floor, as wide as his hand, though Jimothy couldn’t have said what color it was, exactly. It went straight as a ruler, and it seemed to know somehow that Jimothy could go right through walls, because that was what it did: it took them in the most direct route possible to some unknown destination. Jimothy made neat little rectangular holes in whatever metal or plaster or plastic was in the way. Sometimes he cut wires, which sparked in the dust. Several times the Line dropped through the floor, so he cut a hole in the floor and made a slide for Michael and AJ.

  He was glad Michael was with him. They heard people shouting in the distance sometimes. Jimothy thought that there were a lot of scared people around him nearby. There were a lot of white walls and cement floors, and lots of computers and bright lights and mist and fear. Blood swirled into water that drained from broken pipes, down into a cavernous darkness below.

  They encountered a monster. It was kind of like a lion, the way that a small, frightened animal would imagine a lion. But it was only mist; Jimothy could see that easily with the Line. He broke it into pieces with light, and it turned back into what it was.

  They sometimes heard the sound of distant thunder. It had a powerful, ominous effect in the mazelike halls and the mist.

  “How big is this place?” Mike wondered behind Jimothy.

  “I think we’re almost there,” Jimothy replied. “But do you know where ‘there’ is?”

  “Mr. Carter said it’s a door,” said AJ. “To a museum.”

  “Oh,” said Jimothy. The Museum. He had liked that place. Sort of. It was calm and quiet, like walking around places at night. A little lonely, though.

  The Line led Jimothy to a big metal circle like a vault door, set into a wall of the same dull metal. Jimothy was trying to figure out if he could open this door without cutting through it, because he’d been feeling guilty about making a mess, when a noise made them all turn around. AJ had a gun, and Jimothy was worried she might use it on the person they saw behind them because he was wearing the orange and gray of October Industries. The man panted, staring at them, afraid.

  Another figure appeared behind him. Jimothy had never met Riley McFinn, but he knew what he looked like. And he carried Leah, Eric’s sister, in his arms.

  “Mr. Whyte,” said McFinn as though he had expected to find them here. “AJ. Jimothy, glad to see you’re awake. This is Will; he’s with me, and we need to hurry.” AJ dropped the gun at once. Leah struggled out of McFinn’s arms and ran to embrace AJ.

  “It’s just there,” said Will, the tall black guy wearing an October Industries coat. He pointed at the door that the line went under, but he was staring at Elizabeth. Or, probably, at the hovering bed of blue light she was sleeping on.

  “Can you open it?” asked McFinn.

  Will shook his head. “I don’t have clearance. And we’re in lockdown.”

  McFinn detached something from his belt and tossed it at the door. “Clara,” he said. “I need…” He trailed off; his green-eyed gaze moved from the door to Elizabeth’s bed of light to Jimothy. “Mr. Whyte the Younger,” said McFinn. “Can you open that door? It’s a titanium alloy.”

  Jimothy didn’t know for sure what a titanium alloy was, but he could see that Mr. McFinn meant it when he said they were in a hurry. And Jimothy thought he could trust McFinn. Kate had told him all about her crazy uncle. Jimothy looked at the door. Green light flared in a neat rectangle and vanished. Nothing happened, and Jimothy realized it because the section wasn’t going to fall on its own. He had to push it inward. He knocked the rectangular chunk into the room beyond, where it fell with a crash that shook the floor. The room beyond was well lit, and full of sound.

  “Good man,” said McFinn. “In we go, now.” He stepped through into the room beyond. Then he said, “Oh.” Then he said, “Don’t be alarmed; I’m here to assess your progress. Nearly finished?”

  Jimothy and the rest of them followed through the gap and discovered a big open space with half a dozen confused scientists, all wearing the colors of October Industries, all looking at Mr. McFinn and the others coming through the door. To Jimothy, they looked mostly just scared.

  The room was shaped like an egg the size of Jimothy’s elementary school basketball stadium. Boxes and screens covered the far wall, along with tubes and rods and glass tanks with glowing stuff in them and all kinds of other things that Jim could not recognize. All of this was connected with wires and conduits to a big metal square up against the far wall. Little pieces and bits of metal lay scattered on the floor, along with papers and spools of wire. There was one other door into the room besides the one Jimothy had just cut a hole in.

  “Are you…” asked one of the guys in the orange and gray coats, “…Raschez?”

  “Does it matter?” said McFinn. “I can get you out of here. We all need to get out of here. Right.” Even though one of the men was uneasily aiming a gun at him, McFinn strode to a console on the far wall. “The calibration,” he said, to a nearby scientist. He pointed with his crystal-tipped staff. “Have you run it?”

  “We…eh. We were supposed to wait for the…the, ah…” Her voice wandered into silence.

  Then someone else said, simply, “Do you have the codes?”

  McFinn was already doing something on the closest computer. “Codes,” he chuckled. “For my own software? Plugging you in, Clara. The rest of you,” he looked at the OI guys, and for a second his glance included Jimothy, “cover me.”

  They exchanged glances. One of them noticed the guy named Will again. “Will?” he asked.

  Will nodded. “Do what he says,” he said. “We gotta go. He’s here. That…guy. Black.”

  Several of the OI guys knew what he was talking about, because their faces went pale and their eyes widened, and those with weapons clutched them tightly, nervously. One of them said in a weak voice, “It’s…he’s…coming?”

  “Weren’t you lishening? He’sh already here.”

  The sound of Black’s voice stopped everybody in their tracks—everyone but McFinn, who was prying a panel off of a nearby wall.

  Before Jimothy could even turn around to see Black, the room was full of thunder. It was the booming, echoing crash of a lightning strike close at hand, but the sound was also sick. Something was wrong with it; it was a thunder produced by diseased lightning.

  Jimothy had reacted instinctively on hearing that voice. He made a shield, a wall of light between himself and the source of the sound, extended to block those nearby. Michael, AJ, Leah, Elizabeth, Will, McFinn, and one of the OI scientists lucky enough to be standing close by—all were sheltered, though the shimmering barrier of light cracked in every place that one of Black’s bullets struck. Elsewhere in the room, people wearing the orange and gray of October Industries collapsed to the floor, their heads replaced by momentary sprays of glistening red blood.

  Jimothy seized up in horror at the sight of death, sudden and violent. He could see the thing called Abraham Black through the shield he had made. He had only ever seen Black in his dreams. This looked exactly like that; exactly like the painting he had done, what seemed like so long ago. Black upon black, layer on layer of darkness. An impenetrable cloud. Terrifying. Yet still, there was a person in there somewhere. You just had to look at it under a light.

  “What’sh thish?” said Black. He stepped out from the dark. It clung to him like an oily web while shadows crept around the room like an infection. Like a tumor, maybe. The room was dimmer already; the lights overhead stuttered and failed. Black’s face was in shadow, all but his mouth, stretched into an insane gap-toothed grin, dripping with black as though drooling ink.

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  Jimothy couldn’t see Black’s eyes, but he sensed a horrible gaze upon him. His guts wrenched in fear; his heart felt cold. “You’re no preacher man,” growled Black. “Let’sh shee that light, kid.”

  Suddenly his arms were up, the revolvers huge, reflecting the flickering lights. Thunder crashed again, but this time it didn’t stop. Cracks like the breaking of glass skittered rapidly across Jimothy’s shield of light. It wouldn’t hold. But if it fell—what then?

  Jimothy looked at the others. Michael and AJ were hugging each other, staring transfixed in horror at Black. Leah was burying her face in AJ’s leg. Will was cowering, fallen over. And Elizabeth was still asleep, which seemed amazing in all this noise.

  Jimothy realized that there was only one thing stopping all of them from dying just like the OI people had seconds before, and it was him. Just him. He didn’t want that. But there it was. There was Elizabeth, sleeping sound, and Michael with whom he had just been reunited.

  Jimothy twisted his cane as though to dig it into the metal-tiled floor. He started to speak, but his tiny squeak of a voice was inaudible over the racket.

  The thunder ended. It happened right when, as Jimothy knew, the shield he had made was about to break. Was Black giving him a chance?

  Jimothy swallowed. He was shaking all over. But Maugrim had been right. I have nothing to fear from you, hero, when you have nothing to protect.

  I can be strong, Jimothy thought. I can be brave, if I have to be. If someone needs me to be. I can be like a lighthouse.

  “Get behind me,” he said. “Everyone.” He tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. “Stay back.”

  “Jim…” said Michael. But he did. He stepped back behind Jimothy, retreated close to where McFinn was still working, pulled AJ and Leah with him.

  Jimothy stepped forward. He moved the shield behind him, hoping he wouldn’t have to concentrate too much on it, wishing that he had a crystal with him, or even Niri’s light. Maybe this would have been the time to use it, to use all that brightness. Because the blackness coiling up in front of him was so, so dark.

  “Ready, kid?” said Black, and Jimothy could hear his horrible smile. “Let’sh danshe.”

  Black rushed in like lightning, fast as the bullets he fired. Jimothy could barely react, though his light was as fast as his thoughts. He wrapped himself in a shield of radiance and flung himself to the side. He skidded along the floor and left a trail of blazing sparks in his wake.

  Black, just behind, followed with a roar of thunder. Jimothy felt the bullets strike the shield he had made around himself, and each one felt like a hammer of hot ice.

  And Black was right there, right in front of Jimothy. One of the silver revolvers whipped through the air and struck Jimothy on the side of the head before he could react. The impact spun him across the room, but the damage was more in confusion than in actual hurt. He struck a wall. His shields held, but shadows swarmed the wall, and they lashed out, coiled around him like cold serpents, and now Black was there again, standing above Jimothy, somehow extremely fast in the dark, and Jimothy was looking into the cavernous barrel of a revolver.

  He exploded with light. He could make it do whatever he wanted, so he tried to think very fast. A claw of light clamped onto the silver revolver and wrenched it from Black’s hand. Spears of light like warm sunbeams exploded from the floor, shredding the flood of shadows surrounding Black. A dozen razor-thin blades flashed out at the nightmare. Each of those blades was the same as what he had used to slice through the ‘titanium alloy’ door, but Black deflected them with his free revolver, grinning maniacally.

  Black turned sideways and vanished into nothing. Jimothy was confused for the half second it took for Black to slip back into existence to one side, gun extended. Black fired, point-black, at the left side of Jimothy’s head.

  The impact knocked him down; the shield almost shattered. He fell to the floor, realized that he still held the cane, flailed it at Black. A pillar of light, like a giant’s baseball bat made out of the sun, smashed Black into the wall. It smashed right through the wall, and through the wall after that, and then through part of the floor.

  But Black had either recovered quickly or escaped the blow altogether, for he slumped up from the shadows nearby, the movement of his body disturbing and unnatural, boneless and too-fluid. He turned to face Jimothy, and his entire face was black as pitch, save for a few remaining teeth gleaming in the dark.

  A hammer of darkness descended from above and smashed Jimothy into the floor, and through the floor, down into whatever dark space lay below, and finally into the bedrock foundation of the entire structure.

  Jimothy cried out; his shield barely held. It still hurt. It hurt everywhere, like he had fallen flat on his entire body from a height just barely low enough that he could limp away with only a few cracked ribs. His head hurt. His vision began fading.

  More importantly, he sensed that his shield above had failed—the one protecting everyone else. His concentration had slipped, and there was now nothing between Black and the others.

  Jimothy rose up by moving the light around him rather than through muscular effort. He lifted himself so quickly that he almost blacked out, and he burst through the floor above, directly in front of Michael and the others. The entire floor erupted with burning brilliance, flinging Black into the air. He had been about to shoot; his revolvers had been ready. Maybe they had been aimed at Michael, or Leah, or Elizabeth. That terrible thought made Jimothy angry.

  He put everything he had into his attack upon Black. Everything he could think of, his light made real. Paintstrokes of color in the air, blades of light like he had used against the sea monster, flat planes like how he had cut off Maugrim’s leg. Fireworks that threw back Black’s shadows, blooming flowers of searing incandescence, chains to seize and hold, shards falling like a rain of shattered suns.

  Black was agile, and he could move around through the shadows, and if he had ever actually had a real human body, it seemed like he didn’t have it anymore. Thunder resounded from every part of the room, and Jimothy had to constantly re-imagine his breaking shields.

  Jimothy didn’t know if Black had a limited reserve of shadows, but Jimothy’s own light was running out. If he didn’t finish this, and quickly, then he might not be able to protect Michael and the others after all. But that meant, as he was beginning to fear, that protecting them meant killing Black. And regardless of whether Jimothy could do that, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. He didn’t want to fight. He didn’t want any of this. It was all like a bad dream.

  He was thinking this when Black’s icy steel hand closed itself around his neck from behind and crushed him down into what remained of the floor in a shockwave of light and shadow.

  “Nishe,” growled Black, and he seemed to be panting. “Real nishe, kid.” His voice was so wrong, slithery and oily and grating and all so fake-sounding, like something trying and failing to imitate a human voice, that it made Jimothy feel like throwing up. Or that might have just been because of how hard he’d hit his head. Jimothy felt hot tears on his face.

  Black raised a revolver in front of Jimothy’s face and clicked the hammer back. “But I got plashesh to be.”

  There was a click next, not thunder, accompanied by a flash of light. Jimothy recognized the sound. It was the sound of a picture being taken. The sound of Michael’s camera.

  Black froze for a moment, then snarled and disappeared from atop Jimothy. Jimothy saw, in the air above where Black had been, a brilliant butterfly the size of a trampoline. He recognized it at once—it was one that Leah had drawn in the ALL-Rover.

  Michael’s camera flashed again. Black, now across the room, hissed and crossed his revolvers in front of him as though to ward off the second exact copy of the first butterfly that materialized from the mist. Jimothy hadn’t noticed with all the shadows and light and not getting shot, but part of the room had become misty.

  Michael stepped forward slowly, camera raised like an offensive weapon. He was looking at the camera, not Black, messing with its settings, so he didn’t even know when Black shot at him. Jimothy managed to put up a barrier in front of Mike just in time.

  Black’s shadows massed on the far side of the room, stacking up like thunderheads, flickering in form. The butterflies flitted mindlessly around the limited confines of the room, stirring the mist with gusts from the flapping of their wings. They were shot down in thunder; their light evaporated, falling in dissipating shreds to the floor.

  “Tricksh,” snarled Black, “won’t shtop me, boy.”

  Michael finished what he was doing and raised the camera again. His hands were shaking, his face was pale, covered in sweat. But he took another picture.

  Jimothy didn’t understand how, or why, but suddenly there were two of Abraham Black on the far side of the room. There were four gleaming revolvers all aimed at each other, and there was a screeching inhuman shriek—of rage or of fear or of some other thing that Jimothy did not know—that made him clap his hands over his ears. Thunder.

  Then, a hand on his shoulder, grabbing his arm, helping him up. It was a warm hand. When Jimothy looked up, he saw Michael’s face. The sight helped him to put aside his terror and rise to his feet.

  Michael was shouting something, trying to be heard over the crashing noise from across the room. “Now, Jim!” he said. He was pointing at Black. “Now!”

  Jimothy understood. Or he thought he did. He had to finish Black, and he had to do it right now, while he still had light left. While Black was distracted, somehow, by himself.

  Jimothy didn’t stop to think about it. He took all the light that he had, and he picked himself up, and he threw himself toward the darkness across the room. One of the Blacks was dissipating into mist. Jimothy made a thousand spears of light and slammed them into Black, pinning him to the wall, the floor, everywhere, because his form was changing, always changing.

  Jimothy thought that he could do it. Right there, right at that moment, he could destroy Abraham Black. It would be like splashing paint thinner on a stain.

  But at that moment, he looked at Black with the Line. He remembered his painting of this thing, this squirming, raging darkness that he held now in his fists, and what he had written to Isaac. There’s a person in there. You just have to look at it in the light.

  So instead of trying to destroy Black, Jimothy spoke. One last try. “Listen,” he said, tears in his voice. “Maybe…maybe we can help each other.”

  The shadows stilled for a moment. Then, quietly, Black spoke. “Heard it before, kid. Too late. Losht your chanshe.”

  All of Jimothy’s spears of light shattered. The darkness of Black slipped away. A single thunderclap echoed through the room behind Jimothy. Someone screamed.

  Jimothy turned and saw Michael falling to the floor. Behind him, Black lowered a gun, then twisted sideways into the darkness and vanished.

  Jimothy didn’t need to turn to know that Black was behind him. He didn’t really care. He could only stare at Michael, lying there on the floor. He could only think: no. Please, no.

  “Shorry, kid,” said the hideous voice of Black.

  There was thunder, and a sudden powerful pain at the back of Jimothy’s head, and then nothingness.