13

For the first time in probably years Marith was not disappointed to wake up. Or, for lack of a better word, she was curious to wake up. Had the previous days actually taken place? Did all that really happen?

Marith didn’t know what to feel. She wasn’t depressed, she wasn’t sad, she wasn’t insecure. She wasn’t exactly beaming with happiness either, but she felt something. She had lost heaviness, mental weight. She felt liberated. She could feel her existence vibrating in the Web, as if she had finally claimed her place in the world.

Her Rebirth had an effect similar to a magician pulling the tablecloth from under the dishes and tableware of a perfectly laid table. The world as she knew it still existed, but the veil had been brusquely pulled away.

The mists had been persistent all throughout the weekend, but seemed to be withdrawing as the new week started and the area’s perpetual drizzle returned. It was still early and dark outside when Marith pulled up with one of Pine Industries’ trucks.

“Good Lord, this monstrosity is harder to manoeuvre than a battleship!”

She hit the imaginary shift pedal to switch to second gear, but her hand didn’t find a clutch and the car came to a jolting halt after turning onto the bypass. The Merryfield sisters were hanging in their seatbelts, while Lieke screamed Marith’s name, not for the first time that morning.

Marith’s feet kept having this strange interaction with the pedals that wasn’t exactly constructive for the continuation of their journey.

“It’s not the size of the vehicle,” Lieke hissed. “You need to stop using the brake pedal as a shift pedal. It’s an automatic. It doesn’t have one!” She concluded with bulging eyes.

“Okay okay okay,” Marith whispered to herself. The shock of the belt suddenly constricting around her torso hadn’t worn off yet.

She saw traffic occurring in the rear-view mirror, so she quickly accelerated the car, meanwhile enduring loud sighs from her sister, criticising her driving skills, or lack thereof.

They were quiet for a while. Marith pondered the elusiveness of the situation their lives were in at the moment and Lieke stressed about how she was going to look, how she was going to sound and how she would establish and maintain the unblemished reputation she’d had enjoyed at her high school in Norway. Was this all a huge mistake? Maybe she should have stayed and just endure the negligence and verbal abuse of her mother? Was there even a way back at this point?

Marith focused on carrying on safely over shining wet roads, bordered by big rocks and thick greenery. Their surroundings looked emerald, rather than green, in the haze that the sprinkle and the speed of the car created around them.

Meanwhile Lieke started to panic.

“Am I going to be the girl that almost drowned now for the rest of the year?” She asked demure.

Her boldness had clearly diminished somewhat after her nightly escapade at the lake. Marith prayed it would be a temporary change. She had just gotten used to Lieke’s bravado again and she liked it.

“You might just be, but it’ll pass. Just emphasize your qualities outside what happened to you. You’ll be the exotic girl from Europe. Embrace that and they will too.” Marith hoped her sisterly advice made any sense, since she wasn’t exactly practiced at being a big sister.

Less than fifteen minutes later Marith abruptly braked in front of a red brick building of stature, where Amber stood waiting for them, wearing a rain poncho, so she could guide Lieke to their first class.

There were in fact three buildings, positioned in perfectly symmetrical alignment. In front of the centre building a neatly kept lawn stretched out towards the sidewalk. A path went up to the giant double doors in the middle of the structure, like a tongue rolling out of a hard, square face.

If it wouldn’t have been for the sign on the green lawn and the teenagers walking in and out of the buildings Marith wouldn’t have taken it for a high school. She would have driven by it, assuming it was the city hall of Spectre Lake.

“I thought only private schools look like this,” Lieke shared, even more timid.

“Me too, this actually looks quite neat.”

“Here we go, I guess.” Lieke sighed, releasing her seatbelt and grabbing her backpack.

Walking Lieke to that impressive middle building, in Ambers wake, Marith felt a pang in her heart. She recognized it as envy. The Spectre Lake High School reminded her that her own life had lost direction. She missed working towards a tangible and achievable goal.

Sure, she had her fellow Pupils now and their battle against some guy with a beard, but that was still pretty elusive and obscure. There was no clear date by which the Kid had to be expelled from this dimension.

The Chain would have to wait and see. Wait and see what the Kid would actually look like, wait and see when he would strike and what tricks he had up his sleeve for them, wait and see if he would beat them to finding the successor of Watchmaker. Marith didn’t like any of it. She craved security and clarity, two things both her parents and the chemistry of her brain had never been able to provide for her. Obtaining a high school diploma suddenly felt like a simple and relaxing goal. Mostly because she had already done that once, not too long ago.

After helping Lieke getting administered by an uninspiring, mildly obese, middle aged woman with a short, spicy haircut who had seemed to have lost the will to live a long time ago Marith went back to the truck.

With some apprehension she turned the key in the ignition. If she would slip up again and cause damage to another person’s vehicle, or, heaven’s forbid, even property, she would be all alone to handle the consequences. Her sharp, quick-witted sister was finally where she belonged at her age, in school.

Marith had an epiphany and hoisted herself up by grabbing the steering wheel and folding her left leg under her bottom. That way stomping on the brakes in an attempt to shift imaginary gears would be impossible, she figured.

A favourable side effect was that her field of view was wider. She wasn’t dependent on angling her neck in an uncomfortable effort to see past the dashboard.

She quickly redid her ponytail in the little mirror, before folding the sun visor again and reaching for the gear selector lever. During that journey through the vehicle an unmistakable yellow windbreaker was caught by the corner of her eye.

Marith froze at the sight of the figure walking on the sidewalk away from her. That state of fright didn’t last long. She turned off the engine, jumped out of the car and went into pursuit, which also didn’t take long, given the aged movements of the Elder that was being chased.

“Pavan!” She had never known his last name, so she assumed addressing him on a first name basis, now that she was in her twenties, wouldn’t be an issue.

“Aah, Marith.” His deep, but crackling, voice sounded as if he was smiling.

He turned around and Marith halted the moment his warm, brown eyes locked on hers. Looking exactly the same as during their previous encounter, apart from his telling gaze, he was even wearing his thin, gold-plated glasses.

“How have you been?”

“Well, I’ve been… existing,” Marith answered slightly uncomfortable, while her mind raced past all the unlikely events that had occurred in the last few weeks of her life.

“You’ve had your Rebirth.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s what I do.”

“So you’re a Mage as well?” Marith almost burst out with enthusiasm.

He smiled confirming. They stood awkwardly on the empty sidewalk, staring at each other, as the last students hurried into the building behind Marith. On her right a baseball field lay deserted, on a levelled piece of land, waiting for spring. On her left some cars passed them by. Even though most of her attention was absorbed by the old man she was facing she was still hyper-aware of her surroundings.

“Why did they send you? To come see me three weeks ago,” Marith clarified. She already knew the reason of his visitation, just not why he was specifically chosen to warn her.

“Believe it or not, I am the fittest one in our group of leftovers. Most of them are too old for such tricks or not even among us anymore.”

Marith was reminded of miss Parker and given the experience she’d had with her she could at least imagine the state of the remaining ones.

“What more do you do as a Mage?” Marith figured this was the time to ask for the answers she thought he owed her.

“Not much anymore, to be fair.” He had resumed walking, away from the school. Marith followed him eagerly.

“I understand, but what are your specific talents?”

“I came to warn you by refreshing your memory and adding new visions. I am sure you’ve learned by now that we can all share what we want to share. My talents differ from the others, because I can enter your mind involuntarily and do what I want inside. Somewhat like a parasite,” he added, humoured by this finding.

“Could you enter my mind again?”

“I could. The fact that you’ve been Rebirthed doesn’t change that, but I don’t make a habit of it.”

“When you were headmaster…” Marith started.

“I was already a member of my Chain,” Pavan finished in the amused tone that was apparently a part of his personality. “In fact, I used my talents to figure out which one of my students might become Pupils. Of course, there were several primary schools in this area back then and not all of you stem from the same generation, but I did notice peculiarities in quite a few kids.”

Marith was quiet and content with what he was explaining. It brought peace to her mind, knowing that the answers were out there.

“My experiences with the local youth made it hell of a lot easier to stay ahead of the Kid in recent years, but you having moved to the Netherlands complicated the matters somewhat.”

“I apologize,” Marith said jokingly.

“No, I understand your roots are spread across this globe and that makes your past difficult to such a degree that you are absolutely not to blame for any inconvenience on our part.”

Marith was momentarily blown away by the depth of that answer. He was right, in a way. The world she had grown up in, but mostly her mother, had convinced her that it was her own deficiency that had caused the problems in her life. She could see clear now. She realized that what her sense of justice had always suggested to her was in fact true, which was that her unstableness wasn’t caused by any wrongdoings of herself, but by that of the supposed ‘role models’ in her life when she was young and by the ludicrous demands and expectations of the society she grew up in.

“Thank you,” Marith answered demure, feeling like her old, insecure self again. Luckily, that sentiment lasted only a few moments, before fresh questions started brewing in her brain.

“How come I find you here? On the sidewalk of a high school?”

“Of course they will never know who I am, but it is fun to be able to see family grow up, even if it’s distant family. Most people don’t get to do that, you know.”

Marith frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Two of my descendants are attending Spectre Lake High School now. As you understand, they cannot know who I am. It would raise questions that I cannot and should not answer. So, I visit all my offspring every once in a while. Some of them moved further away, of course, but the ones that still reside in the area are on my agenda.”

“Why can’t they know their own grandfather?” Marith wondered if she had overstepped her boundaries. Maybe there were family feuds going on that were none of her business.

Pavan chuckled a warm, but brittle laugh. “I am their great-great-grandfather. I should have been long gone.”

“But Jonathan’s grandmother is an Elder. She can’t be that old if she’s his grandma.”

“Lucille is actually his great-great-grandmother as well, but he has been taught to call her his grandmother, since he was young. He might not even know how old she is. She returned to Sweet Lake when his parents fell ill. Before that they weren’t that close.”

“Don’t his parents know? Are they in on it?”

“I wouldn’t use that phrasing. They know the peculiarities of Sweet Lake, but not the details.”

“How do you hide your age from the authorities then?”

“Brad arranges false papers every now and then. Great guy, very dutiful,” he mused.

“Do you live in Sweet Lake?” Marith continued her array of questions unapologetically.

“No, not at the moment. I move around. Every decade or so I find a new town. I try to stay close to the tri-lake area, but I have to be careful. My aging, or rather a lack of it, easily draws too much suspicion.”

Marith nodded. She did wonder briefly why he didn’t come to visit her after she had returned to Sweet Lake, but she decided not to push it. The old man seemed occupied with plenty of issues and she had been intercepted by Vanessa anyway.

“Wasn’t it quite a risk, assuming that I would return to Oregon, after the attack on the train?”

“No, it wasn’t. Even if you would have had a great relationship with your mother and a bad one with your father you still would have come here. It’s the asteroids that formed this environment. The Hotspots function like magnets to people like us. You did not arrive here by fluke.”

Marith opened her mouth, closed it and averted her eyes, staring at the side walk as they strolled on, into a neighbourhood that could have been described as suburban, if it wasn’t for the fact that there were no large cities built in those mountains.

“I apologize for being so forward. I couldn’t not notice your family ties when I was in your head before. This is exactly why I don’t make a habit of invading people’s minds. It results in situations like this.”

“No,” Marith stammered and shook her head. “It’s okay, it’s fine.”

They continued down a lane with little parks, tall trees and detached houses, built to withstand the elevation. Marith was getting curious where their walk would end up, since Nick’s truck was still parked in front of the school and she would need it to get home.

After a while Pavan halted, got his clockwork out, flipped it open and determined the time. He looked up at a schedule attached to a pole. They had strolled to a bus stop.

“I can give you a ride to anywhere,” Marith offered, pointing back at the direction of the school where they had started the conversation and where she had abandoned the vehicle that wasn’t hers.

“No need. The next bus will be here in ten minutes. Thank you for offering though.”

Marith staggered. She had only ten more minutes left with this mysterious Mage that she had met when she was a little girl. If only she had known who, and mostly what, he was back then. She would have had more than a decade to come up with the right questions to ask at this moment in time.

“The visions, the dreams, the nightmares, that you used to show me the future, seem to have stopped, since the Push. Even though it’s just been a few days, I can feel a difference. I was sure I was going to be a Prophet, despite Vanessa’s prognosis.” Marith attempted to drag more details of information about her new existence out of this accidental meeting.

“No, you are a Mage, in need of a Prophet. You turn into what is necessary,” Pavan explained. “The Chain already had enough Prophets… and let’s face it. You were never going to become a Runner.”

Marith suppressed a grin. “True.”

“Your talents clearly lay elsewhere. We are going to find out what it is. Don’t worry.” He winked at her in a reassuring way.

“How will I know what my talent is? I feel so useless now, like I am just hanging around, despite the fact I am a healthy adult.”

“Give it time. How do you feel now, after your Rebirth?”

“I feel like myself at full potential. Earthly stuff, like mental or physical issues aren’t holding me back anymore.”

“I remember that,” Pavan said with a little smile.

“It is very light and weightless. Will it stay with me?”

“The euphoric feeling will wear off, but everything else will stay and might even grow. Your senses, your talents, the bond you have with the Chain… all that will get stronger. After the Rebirth Pupils only carry with them what is relevant for their existence.”

Marith nodded. This new life sounded like music to her ears.

She didn’t need her glasses anymore, nor did she experience chest pains and shortness of breath any longer. The bruises that had remained after the train accident and the store robbery had disappeared. However, her vitiligo had stayed, as a remnant of a past life. She figured that if it stayed, it might serve a purpose later.

“Isn't it amazing how the sky looks blue during the day, but gives us the opportunity to gaze at the stars at night?”

“Sure,” was all Marith could come up with.

Pavan went on to explain. “At daytime the sunlight illuminates the molecules in the atmosphere, causing the light to break in such a way we perceive the sky as blue. When our part of the Earth rotates away from the Sun and night falls we can stare into the Universe.”

Marith nodded, slightly surprised by his in-depth knowledge of physics. Maybe, having the ability to grow older than a Giant Galápagos Tortoise would eventually spark an interest in the exact sciences in her as well. Maybe, after the Empty freezes over, Marith thought after some internal deliberations.

“For us it’s always night after the Push. The blue blanket has been pulled away and can never be placed back. We always have the ability and the duty to see past the blue world that the majority of human beings still observe as truth. After our Rebirths the world will forever be a starry night to us.”

After the Push all the chaos in Marith’s mind began to form a harmony. Pieces of a puzzle began to shape a semi-logic picture of everything she had wondered about in her past life. The more she would learn about those puzzle pieces, over the course of several weeks, the more the harmony would become a symphony.

Marith felt as if she had gotten a grip on an undercurrent of the Web. She felt as if her existence became purposeful and her future became more clear, since she learned how to swim with the current, towards it.

On Wednesday night, 21:00 hours Sweet Lake time, six triangles from six Chains met each other for the first time, in the atrium of the lifeless, dark, grey Corridors. They arrived one by one, shivering from the wetness of the Jump.

In the middle of the massive square space a king size canopy sleigh bed had been waiting. It wasn’t used regularly and lately it had been wondering what it was even hanging around for. As Pupils from all over the world fell into its fluffy sheets and thick pillows with a muffled thud clouds of dust whirled in the moonlight that managed to protrude the water of the lake. The bed felt alive again and the Corridors were vibrating with a heavy fog of anticipation.

The Keymaker had left a big pile of fresh towels, taken from one of the many chambers the deep maze was housing. Kyle handed them out and the Pupils wrapped themselves in them.

The last Pupils were caught in the tension of the lower plane of the lake, before bursting through and landing on the bed. The same way gravity curves around the Earth the net of interwoven molecules curved to a maximum and, without leaking so much as a drop of sweet water, the three final Chain-members plummeted to the matrass in soaking wet outfits, shortly after each other. The surface of the water recovered to a perfectly undulating mass.

South-America, Europe and Russia, Africa, Asia and Australia were all represented by three Pupils of their respective Chains. In the usually desolate hallways that came together in the atrium, like a system of veins flowing to and from the heart, everybody stared at each other in stillness.

Being separated by continents and oceans, since birth, they had never met before. For the first time they had an opportunity to meet their counterparts, see what they looked like, maybe even speak to them and connect, if they dared. Being a Pupil was the most rare condition a human being could catch, so to speak, and knowing what to say to another affected peer was harder than it seemed.

“We come bearing gifts!” James broke the silence that pressed cold against their chests.

The triangle of the Euro-Russian Chain had two others in their wake. Anton and James, the two missing Runners from the North-American Chain.

“How are you guys doing?” Vanessa asked Anton and James.

“Swimmingly,” the latter one answered with a sarcasm steeped tone of cheeriness.

“What are you guys wearing?” Kyle frowned at their head-wear.

“Ushanka’s,” Anton answered, in a thick Russian tongue.

“They look like drowned cats.”

“Maybe because we jumped into dry impact craters in Siberia and ended up in bloody Sweet Lake,” James scoffed, yanking the wet, furry hat of his head, leaving his wild, brown curls to dangle freely. Anton followed his example and ruffled through his short, blonde hair in an attempt to reason with it.

The two young men joined their fellows. As they walked over to Vanessa they opened their coats and handed her the valuables they had been out hunting for.

“What took you so long?” Juliette asked James jokingly.

“I can catch the weather, I cannot make it. I scoured the planet for optimal Sunshine,” James shared, pulling a glass vessel with a cork, the size of a jam jar and the shape of an Erlenmeyer, out of a pocket, “and I found it in Scotland!”

“What is optimal Sunshine?”

“Where it is least likely to be found! That way it is extra powerful.”

Vanessa accepted the Sunshine with care and briefly inspected the contents of the glass hull. James had managed to capture a hot, swirling mess that shone bright and fierce in the palm of her hand.

This was a promising development, Vanessa thought to herself, after she had thanked him. Could James become the next Potionmaker?

The glittering rays illuminated the dim atrium in a welcome way and she placed it on the mahogany side table the towels had previously been on. Meanwhile, the others were shaking off their coats and drying themselves as much as possible.

Anton, in turn, handed the weaponry he had retrieved. Unhooking the clasp of the leather slip-over they uncovered a slender self-bow and one single arrow.

“I had to steal it from the basement of the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest,” he informed matter-of-factly, before being met with gaping mouths and wide eyes. “Do not worry, I had some help and we managed to do it unseen.”

Vanessa nodded, inspecting the Perpetual Arrow. The bow and arrow were both made of light-weight and durable materials that none of the Pupils had any knowledge off, since they stemmed from an age in which the Slavs and the Vikings were still fighting each other. The arc of the bow had a peculiar curve and an iron grip and iron tips, where the – currently not attached - bowstring could join the ends of the limbs of the bow. The shaft of the arrow consisted of a long, straight, stiff piece of dark wood. The head of the arrow was seemingly crafted from iron as well.

Vanessa knew that if these were the right bow and arrow they would not be cast off iron at all. They looked inconspicuous, which may have been done on purpose or it was a mark of the times they were crafted in.

“Are you sure these are the ones?” She turned the weaponry around in her hands several times trying to catch some of the Sunshine, hoping for confirming clues.

It might as well have been a replica, but Anton gently held the arms in the shimmering light, pointing at symbols on the hardware.

“What does it mean?” Vanessa asked with interest.

“It’s Glagolitic, the oldest known Slavic alphabet. That is how we know it is from the right era. I looked into it and, with some help of the internet, came to the conclusion that this means ‘Oracle’,” he pointed to the tip of one of the bow’s limbs, “this means ‘Time’,” he pointed to the other end, “this means ‘Child’,” he pointed to the grip of the bow, “and this means ‘Claw’,” he finished, pointing at the arrowhead.

Vanessa flashed him a conspirational look with her signature slew smile and a little nod. Then she put it next to the Sunshine. They had company after all.

“Good evening fellow Pupils, I hope you all had a marvellous Jump,” Kyle started, receiving some morose stares that could be translated into ‘Is this guy serious?’ with very little imagination.

“As you all know the Kid is awake…” Kyle continued, attempting to take charge, after their guests had tossed their wet coats on the bed, forming a disorganized pile. Most had given up on getting actually dry and their towels joined the mess on the bed.

Vanessa wasn’t sure how she felt about Kyle leading this gathering, but she decided to give him a chance. He was wearing his thick hair back with wax. She noticed he had the tips dyed blonde, which stood in stark contrast to his eager, but warm brown eyes. He had changed a lot, since they had been paired up, but especially in the last few weeks. He seemed to have found his way in their world and that was laudable.

“Can we speak freely here?” A member of the South-American Chain wondered. The triangles from the other Chains had been mostly silent up until now.

“Where even are we?” Another Pupil, from the African Chain asked defiant.

“Yeah, what is this place?”

“Yes, you can,” Vanessa said, only answering the first question, leaving the floor to Kyle. Technically there was a Conference room, but the Atrium sufficed as well. She didn’t feel like giving a tour tonight.

“We call it the Corridors,” Kyle courteously answered one of the other inquiries.

“But it’s actually a tomb,” Juliette added.

This time she wore her hair in one big braid that trailed the back of her head. A comfortable tracksuit hugged her trained body. She had been running an awful lot lately, on top of her day job at the shelter, being the only Runner in town. Vanessa was relieved for her that James and Anton had finally returned to complement their Chain.

“What tomb?” One of the Australians informed.

“The tomb?” An Asian Pupil asked, stupefied.

They all looked around in awe at the hoar stronghold. There wasn’t much to see, except smooth, dark walls, occasionally ornamented with protruding light spots, and hallways, lots of them, running wild in every direction, occasionally meeting again to shake hands and make the Maze even more confusing for the unfortunate soul that would embark on a walk alone down there. The hallways restructured quite often and Keymaker was one of the very few fitted to navigate down there.

“But the deceased isn’t here anymore,” Juliette shared redundant and ominous, with a flick of her eyebrows.

“That is why we need to come up with a plan of action,” Kyle tried to take his position as chairman back.

“It seems to me that we are caught in the undertow of a feud between Oracle, Watchmaker and the Kid.” This came from one of the South-American members. It was clear by his tone of voice that this was the most overbearing member of their Chain.

“I’d say it is a little more than a feud,” Juliette retorted, unpleasantly surprised by this attitude.

“I’d say it is none of our business.” This seemed to be coming from the African Chain.

“What?” Vanessa couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her eyes flashed with fire, she inadvertently straightened her back and stuck her chin out.

“P-potentially the ending of time as we know it,” Kyle stuttered.

“The beginning of a better one if we do our jobs right,” Juliette attempted to be persuasive and stay diplomatic.

“Listen, we are very, very happy and honoured you guys went through the trouble to come here. We would appreciate it if you would also just take a moment to assess the importance of the situation. This town… isn’t this town anymore,” Vanessa tried to glue the hostility. “The darkness, the emptiness… they are spreading and we all know this is just the beginning. You’ve all felt it, even if it hasn’t affected you yet. I know this is not a foreign concept to you.

“He won’t stop until he has the next Watchmaker and if he does… if he does find this successor it is over for us. It is our job, our duty to beat him to it and we could really use your help. Please, consider it.”

They had to start this over, they just had to. This could not be happening. She let a silence hang in between them, hoping they would be porous enough to absorb the severity.

The hands and wrists of the triangles locked, instantly on their own wavelength. Five circles in silent deliberation. The triangle that represented the North-American Chain waited in taciturnity, but not in tranquillity. They didn’t connect and avoided eye-contact, not wanting to be confronted with each other’s despair. There wasn’t much to say and the stakes were too high to be casually chattering amongst each other.

After a while their guests broke their fragments of Chains and turned to their hosts, who were hopefully awaiting the outcome.

“You’re on your own.”

“We decided the same.”

“Unbelievable”, whispered Kyle, breathless.

“Then why did you even come here?!” Vanessa spewed fierce, to no avail.

“Oracle told us to.” It rang clear as day.

“Watchmaker gave us the specifics,” some others murmured.

“The United States are always on their own!” James burst out. He had been silent up until now. He made a grand and frustrated hand gesture. Kyle buried his face in his palms.

“Do you not realize this will affect the entire planet? The whole Web?”

Nobody was listening, they let the words of the North-American Chain cascade of their shoulders, but James wasn’t quite done yet. “Yeah, just leave it to US to solve e-ve-ry-bodies problems.”

Vanessa knew he was right. If their Chain could not get this under control the other Chains would be affected in time as well. Probably sooner, rather than later. Yet, they were left to their own merits.

Kyle and Vanessa felt as if the decisions of the other Chains had been clear before they had arrived. This was just a little show they put on, so they seemed sincere in their intentions.

“The North-American Chain is the best organized one. You are clearly up for the job.”

“I guess no good deed goes unpunished,” James spat. He looked in disbelief at the Euro-Russian Chain that he had taken a Jump with a mere twenty minutes earlier. Anton was avoiding conflict and inspected his shoes, even though he was disappointed beyond measure.

“We are the most organized Chain, because we HAD to! We adapted to the situation. That doesn’t mean you don’t owe us some help. Everybody benefits from a free Web, yet nobody seems willing to pay the necessary price…” James was like a steam engine, having to gain heat and momentum to get his message across.

“You insisted on keeping the Kid here,” a member of the African Chain started with an imminent undertone.

“Apparently you didn’t trust us with his body,” the South-American Chain added, strengthened by their African counterparts.

“That’s a lie!” Kyle interfered.

“Now he’s your problem.”

“You want him? You take him!” James almost yelled, before Vanessa put a hand on his arm, shunning an escalation.

“You’re acting like you are morally pure, just because the body wasn’t buried on your continent. The Kid happens to be a universal issue… apparently you still don’t get that that at this point,” Juliette sneered with her muscled arms crossed tightly over her chest.

“Kyle is right,” Vanessa started. “You are being disingenuous. I am not sure where your information comes from, maybe you are just making it up. I don’t know,” she added quickly, after some angry snorts, “but I do know that the Kid was captured in Asia and the Oracle and the Watchmaker that were serving back then decided to entomb him here, in the Cascades. It was the ideal spot, high up in the mountains, in one of the impact craters, with no inhabitants at the time.”

The other Pupils let this sink in, but didn’t answer. It didn’t fit their narrative and this new information was highly questioned.

“Are we really fighting over a walking corpse here?” Anton decided to make himself heard.

“No, we are shifting the problem.”

“What do the rest of your Chain-members think?” Vanessa asked in a milder tone of voice.

Some hesitation followed. “We don’t have completed Chains were we come from,” a Pupil form Papua New Guinea engaged.

The rest nodded passionately.

“Neither do we!” Kyle pointed manically at nothing.

“But we have seen that yours is practically complete. Our Chains often only have a few members, sometimes a few triangles, but that is it.”

“Sweet Lake is the only place where the Chain is almost complete?”

“What are you hinting at?”

“It must mean something.”

As the dank air turned icy Vanessa, Kyle, Juliette, Anton and James let the fact that they were definitely going to be on their own sink in.

The triangles looked like ghosts in the dim space. They were just lingering there, not interacting properly, waiting for something that was not going to happen.

Why us? Vanessa thought. The Kid, Oracle, Watchmaker, even these Corridors, they all had been around for thousands, of years. Why did this monster have to wake up when they were alive? Why was nobody, but them, willing to make the necessary sacrifices?

The sounds of chirping crickets flowed through the atrium.

“Very funny.” Some people sniggered.

It came from the Mage of the Asian Chain. She figured that was his talent, showing people what he wanted them to see or hear. She wished she could make them feel what she felt at that point, because she clearly wasn’t getting the urgency of the situation across. She was just about to lose her temper. Was this all a joke to them?

“Do you know about the anchor?” A raspy voice sounded from the shadows.

It snapped Vanessa out of it and prevented her frustrations from boiling over. This was one of the members of the Euro-Russian Chain, the ones that hadn’t really spoken yet.

“We’ve met,” Vanessa answered dryly.

A brief, but uncomfortable silence followed as a heavily mutilated Ottoman stepped forward. Vanessa couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed him before.

He had streaks of wild flesh running over his face, from his neck to his hairline. Judging by his wild hairdo the scars continued on his scalp. As the moonshine protruding the plane of water and the lights from the jar of Sunshine flickered over his face the other Pupils could clearly see he was missing his right eye. It had been replaced by a shiny aluminium ball. Both his eyelids didn’t seem to be able to open or close properly anymore.

He had made an obvious talent out of lingering in the shadows, being weary of people responding to his countenance, Vanessa figured.

“I can touch the membranes to other worlds,” he explained. With difficulty he swallowed. Speaking didn’t come easy to him. Not anymore, at least. “Leading up to my Rebirth I didn’t have this under control... to say the least,” he let a brief pause linger so he could clear his throat and his audience could let their imagination run wild.

“You’ve all had the nightmares. Right?”

The company almost nodded in unison.

“One summer night, several years ago, this winged creature escaped from one of my nightmares, clawing his way out of my mind… out of my skull. You see, not all dimensions are created or controlled by the Watchmaker. The anchor comes from a dark world that the Watchmaker has no power over.”

He lifted his body warmer and t-shirt up. The scars continued there. His body was covered in the Birdman’s claw marks. They ran in all directions. Bright red streaks of agony all across his torso. Judging by the space between the wild flesh and the claws that Vanessa had previously encountered the Birdman had grown since his arrival in their dimension.

“It’s bigger now.” She hesitated as she stared at his mutilated body.

Taking the healing powers of the Rebirth into consideration, the wounds must have been even more gruesome before his Push. She started to forgive him for opting out of fighting the Kid.

He nodded in understanding and lowered his soaked clothing again and went on to explain that he was saved by one of their Elders, otherwise he surely would have died. He was also discovered to be a Pupil, which was quite irrefutable after that incident. He was one of the first Mages of their group.

The Elder passed away later. Vanessa wondered if it could have been the strain of saving a Pupil’s life instead of just old age.

“Does this still happen?” Anton informed.

“I have it under control at this point, but I can still see them, every now and then, waiting, preying, on the other side. If I accidentally touch a membrane in my sleep there is no way back.”

To no one in those Corridors did it sound like he had it under control, but nobody had the nerve to correct or question him on that.

He shook his head. “I cannot be here when you kill this creature, because the Kid will use me for a new anchor.”

“You people are fools if you think you can kill it at all!” The Prophet of the Asian Chain interfered. “Even if the Kid won’t have access to him,” she gestured at the marked Ottoman, “and his membranes he will find another way and you will pay! If you kill his anchor you force him to search for another flow of energy. The Watchmaker excluded the Kid from our dimension and because of that he will need a new source of energy to maintain his physical form.”

“W-we knew that…” Kyle lied.

Anton and James exchanged disturbed looks behind his back. Why had they been spending all that time in Europe then? It sounded plausible when she said it, but it hadn’t surfaced in their minds yet, since they had been focusing on catching the Sunshine and collecting the Perpetual Arrow.

“How do you know that?” Juliette informed.

“From our Elders and they learned it from their Elders and so on. As you said,” she addressed Vanessa, “the last time the Kid was defeated, his mind was captured in Asia.”

The North-American company didn’t want to bare any hint of weakness to their recalcitrant guests and they left it at that.

The faint moonlight coming in through the atrium, the tiny spots on the walls and the Sunshine threw irregular, moving shapes across the faces of the opposing Pupils. Vanessa looked at them, envisioning how much simpler things would be if they would just be willing to join forces, and realized they were pushed to face a – soon to be – universal problem on their own.

Vanessa’s hopes about how the near future would unfold had dropped to a desperate low. The five Pupils of the North-American Chain stood staring uncomfortably at nothing, digesting this new information, their morale crushed.

It was awkwardly obvious the other Pupils had nothing to offer, nothing to share and nothing to add anymore. They started to fish their wet coats from the pile on the bed, reluctantly put them on and followed the indigenous Chain to the exit.

Vanessa wanted this night to be over and she kept a quick step. She led them to the exit under the clinic, which would be closest to the cliff. They marched past several heavy sliding doors in silence. The company stared at them, but didn’t dare to ask any questions.

The ceilings and floors were the same dull greenish grey material as the walls. Under different circumstances that may have been soothing, but Kyle saw dancing blots in front of his eyes as he walked by Vanessa’s side.

The hallway to the clinic slowly arched up. They barely moved any air as they ascended to the outer end of the maze. The Corridors seemed to swallow their movements. In contrast to planes of water these walls, floors and ceilings didn’t carry any sound.

Vanessa’s trench coat fluttered wildly around her legs as she stomped forwards on her high heeled boots. Kyle glanced at her from the side. Her long, dark hair danced around her grim face like clouds of rolling thunder.

Within ten minutes they reached a space similar to the atrium in shape and size, except for the fact that only one corridor led there and it wasn’t an atrium. Instead of a bed there was a massive column in the middle of the clearance and behind that, in the outer wall, a beige-coloured elevator.

Several metres before the giant pole Vanessa halted. She glanced at her clockwork and put it back in her pocket. Nobody spoke. Their silence was soon interrupted by creaking and rumbling sounds, like an avalanche was sliding down a distant mountain.

Four screens of rubble and debris formed a square around the pillar. They all took several steps back, so the dust wouldn’t stick to their damp hair or clothing.

A giant platform, surrounded by artificial lighting, slowly descended into the Corridors. On it stood a hefty, middle aged man in dark blue work clothes, who seemed to be operating the technicalities behind it. The tools, instruments and keys attached to his outfit glimmered and shone in the lighting coming from above.

It was true that Vanessa usually did not look happy to see Keymaker, but tonight her face was emitting extra frustrations and distance. Even he caught it.

The group entered the platform in silence, following Kyle and Vanessa. Keymaker commanded them to distribute themselves equally across the podium and up they went. The mechanism behind the workings of this massive elevator was unclear, although not hard to guess. They ascended swiftly into a crisp and clean parking garage where the ambulances of the area’s only hospital stood waiting to be sped to an emergency.

They all blinked at the flashy vehicles and the bright lighting. The contrast to the underground hallways was a lot to bear. They quickly wandered outside through the opened roller doors.

Standing on the asphalt leading to the garage James and Anton looked back at the inconsistently lit building. The various additions that had been appended to the main building in recent years made it look like a modern monstrosity designed in the seventies. As if a child had been playing with blocks one Sunday morning and his father, being the architect, had decided to implement it in real life as a wink to the childlike psyche of every adult.

It was either that or some other random overly simplistic, psychological explanation to cover up the lack of actual designing skills must have been given at the opening. The building lacked identity and any connection to local nature. It was basically what they had seen all over Europe, in cities that had been bombed, or otherwise destroyed, in wars.

Smells of wet pavement and a soggy forest floor wafted around them as the company stood under a cloudy night sky, in between the forest and the hospital. It would probably be one of the last showers of the season, before they would be visited by snow.

Despite the rain, everybody was happy to get outside and leave the Corridors behind. The goodbyes weren’t awkward, because they were barely uttered. Juliette guided the party to the top of the cliff so they could set their clockworks and Jump home. It was a wet, silent and uncomfortable run through those woods and up that cliff. James and Anton formed a reluctant rear-guard.

They were all Pupils, they were all Rebirthed, they had all met Oracle and Watchmaker, they were all bound by the destructive effects the Kid had had on their past and still had on their present, yet they couldn’t function as one, one species or one team. Why was it not enough? Were they simply scared? Or was it plain disinterest? Vanessa just couldn’t imagine being so passive facing the crisis of a lifetime.

Keymaker disappeared into the Corridors again to store the Sunshine and the Perpetual Arrow behind the big sliding doors the group of Pupils had just walked by, clueless about the contents of those chambers. This time he took the elevator in the hallway behind the garage, that led to the clinic, to draw as little attention as possible.

“We’re screwed, Vanessa. We’re absolutely, one hundred percent, completely fucked!” Kyle had lost the strength to deal with it all and just sat slumped on the moist pavement outside the clinic. He stared at his Mage, still in disbelief about the lack of support from their peers.

Vanessa simply stood staring at the heavy clouds that moved across the starry night, mulling over the consequences, barely registering the cold.

“I know,” she finally whispered, with a sigh.

“Since that thing woke up every watch, every clock and all the orreries back in the store are living their own lives. It’s madness.”

“I believe you,” was all Vanessa had to say. Her mind was elsewhere.

“What do we do?” Kyle asked disheartened. Under different circumstances his tone of voice would have been dramatic, but tonight it was only fitting.

“Carry on, as we should. As long as the Kid continues to fulfil his destiny we should at least attempt to fulfil ours.”

Kyle gave it some thought and nodded semi-determined. “We’ll go down anyways. We might as well put up a fight first.”

He wanted to fist bump his Mage, but he knew she very likely couldn’t be bothered, so he saved it for when he would see Brad, Anton or James again.

Vanessa broke into the clinic that night and slept with Gene on his single bed, too exhausted to be inconvenienced by the lack of space. It wasn’t the first time she had snuck in, but Gene felt this night was different. He took her in his arms and knew she needed him. He didn’t ask questions and just enjoyed the fact that he wouldn’t sleep alone that night.

On top off the cliff the Pupils set their clockworks, put them in a pocket behind a zipper and took a few steps back, before starting a spurt to the rim. They jumped over the edge like parachutists from a cargo plane. In a trail of flying dolls, little and vulnerable, compared to the powers of nature, they plummeted towards their Mailboxes, to return to their respective Hotspots.

Kyle was secretly hoping that the Mailboxes wouldn’t open and the arrogant idiots would smash on the waves. Keymaker grinned at that. He sat next to him in a black van that carried the silver logo of his hardware store. It was a silent ride, in the sense that no air was wasted on words.

Kyle informed Will’s father about the stirrings of the night by boring his fingertips into his right wrist. It was a slightly more difficult connection to make, since he wasn’t a member of their triangle or even their Chain, but Kyle got the most important points across.

Bright, light blue and purple, flashes indicated the Mailboxes opening and immediately disappearing after contact again. They jumped one by one, but in bursts of three. From a distance it looked like a giant disco.

“Remember, the Kid is a living organism, just like Oracle and Watchmaker. He will keep trying to find ways to survive,” the Asian Pupil urged, her pale face illuminated by moonlight.

The Ottoman stood behind her and penetrated Juliette’s soul with his good eye, while the Prophet spoke. The Runner nodded, fazed. They took a few steps back and ran to the edge to take the last Jumps of the night.