23

After several more soul crushing practice sessions, involving bows and arrows and stuff to shoot at, Brad was voted to be the designated Birdman killer. James was considered a very promising back up.

It turned out that Brad’s coolness knew no limits. He had an automatic skeet thrower in his back yard they could practice with. They had each taken turns firing at the clay discs with the bows and arrows from both Keymaker and Brad. Their host had been the undisputed victor. All the while, they had been reminded by Vanessa that killing the anchor was a last resort. This had failed to temper the men’s enthusiasm entirely.

At the end of their last training everyone, including Marith, had agreed that Marith should stay away from sharp and fast objects for the rest of her life.

She had quickly grown past being frustrated by her inability to successfully shoot an arrow at anything it was supposed to be shot at. Marith felt she had learned more in the past few months than she had done in her whole entire life leading up to the train crash.

In between any gatherings she had with her fellow Pupils she eased her mind by gaining momentum practicing her talent at home. Keeping busy and bettering herself had always brought peace, whether it was reading books, playing the cello or tampering with heartbeats.

During each exercise she would start by trying to force the upswing of a Flow, which Amber and Lisa had told her about when they had returned from their weekend away at the coast.

That trip seemed so long ago. Their existence had been so much more unspoiled and innocent, before the Kid had awakened.

The Flow is the stream of energy that we can all pull or receive from the Web.

She would evoke the vibrating strings, bundled in her core. She snares would escape her like a fan being opened to create some relief from the heat by moving air. The travelling energy would be tangible at that point.

Our brains have the ability to use, or even to hack the Web in a conscious way.

The Flow would surge as soon as she managed to reach the lucid dream state she had inadvertently got caught up in before. She would suck the energy towards her and let it travel through her. She would bundle it, to create order from chaos.

Nate had told her he could feel it when a vision or premonition should be taken seriously. The nerves in his back would fire and sometimes even hurt when he received an important piece of information from the Web.

It feels like all the nerves in my body, especially the ones in my spine, are firing, but not in a usual way.

A tingling sensation would run over her arms and eventually through her entire - central and peripheral - nervous system. The skin on her fingertips and in her palms would feel numb, but she knew the energy flowing through her arms and hands was powerful.

The tentacles in her brain wouldn’t linger around, perplexed by their existence and her intentions, anymore. She trained the vibrating chords well, until they could find the subject, the target, swiftly. The strings would inform her of every triumph by emitting the pure, sinuous soundwaves of a struck tuning fork.

She also didn’t have to touch her direct object anymore. She could influence most heartbeats from a distance. Not from a large distance, but she could feel her abilities strengthening.

She was starting to gain control over her given talent. She didn’t have a clear purpose for it yet, but wielding her crescent powers felt right and natural.

Search for the miracle within you, Pavan had said.

She wouldn’t isolate herself or sit cross-legged like a Buddha. She would just be eyeing Lieke from across the living room. Most afternoons her little sister would spend, wrapped up in a blanket, mindlessly zapping past the incredible amount of channels Nick’s television had to offer. Marith would usually sit in a fauteuil in the same room, reading a book, being fabulously annoyed by the chaotic sounds and lights emanating from the massive, wall-filling screen.

By employing all she had been taught she could make Lieke go to sleep, by lowering her heartrate by roughly 24 beats per minute, and then finally reach for the remote control and shut the television off. Sometimes Lieke even drooled a little on the blanket, which Marith had thought was pretty funny.

She didn’t dare to experiment on Nick. He knew too much already. His guesses about her, the Chain and his brother had been too accurate. If he would catch her staring at him, while experiencing a throbbing, palpitating heart or light-headedness he would suspect her immediately. She couldn’t risk it.

Which left her with Olive. She had found out she could, carefully, render the dog asleep as well, if she would get too excited over her cello bow again, for instance. She had tried to take it one step further to see if she could influence the dog’s actions, such as her direction when she was walking somewhere. This, however, had not been a prosperous attempt.

Once, Marith had found the dog asleep on her way to her drinker. She was pretty sure Olive had not voluntarily decided to take a nap on the cold kitchen floor. It was her doing and right then she had decided she couldn’t practice on the living any more. She had been able to breathe life back into the little dog by slightly raising her heartrate again. Olive had never been dead, just unconscious.

It felt as if her talent was stored somewhere else and it was simply flowing through her. She could channel it and practice herself in doing so, but that was it. It didn’t really belong to her. She was just the vessel that brought it into this world.

Whenever the energy to activate her talent travelled through her she felt more vigorous than ever. It had taken her some time, but she felt assured she had found the right balance. She could control the chaotic, vibrating strings that the Web consisted of. She was more at peace with herself and her past and more focussed on what was ahead of her.

Daylight had yet to break, but Lisa had already woken up. The lack of sleep made her head spin and her eyelids heavy. She sat up on the bedside her head wobbling drowsily on her neck. She couldn’t believe the how little sleep she had gotten.

Her roommate Sarah had spent the night with her own boyfriend, so that Lisa and William could have the dorm to themselves. They often made arrangements like this, which made their co-habiting so pleasant and successful.

Sarah was clearly not the issue at hand. William had been. Dear, sweet, chubby Will had been tossing and turning all night.

He had been hard to wake up, he had been hard to get back to sleep. His mind had been struggling in an indeterminable state of distress. He kept being sucked back into the twilight by dark premonitions.

Lisa wandered about and ended up in a restroom, under the impression William had caught the flu. It was the season and he hadn’t had his Rebirth yet, so he was still susceptible to such unblest happenings.

Not much later she stumbled back to her dorm on her fluffy slippers and closed the door behind her. She took place on the side of the bed again, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. She had decided not to go through the trouble of attempting to go back to sleep again. Her alarm clock would surely go off within the hour anyway. Maybe she could read a book next to Will in bed.

She arched her neck, checking the nightstand for some light literature, when a clammy hand grabbed her arm from behind. She turned around.

William was laying on his stomach, his head slammed into a pillow. “Lies,” he almost hissed.

She looked at his pale face. Beads of sweat were rolling over his skin. His blondish ginger hair was stuck to his forehead and his temples.

“What?” She whispered with big eyes. She slid next to him in the bed again and stroked his head a bit, before he managed to give an answer.

“That thing…”

“Yes?”

“I saw it again.” He closed his eyes tightly, before opening them again to gaze around in numbed alarm.

He rolled on his side under the covers. He seemed too confused to explain it all in words. Lisa bore the fingers of her right hand into his left wrist. It turned out William hadn’t caught a virus after all.

William’s eyes closed again and his mouth was slightly ajar, while he showed his Prophet. The stream, carrying bits and pieces of worrisome information, now flowed to Lisa, through their secured connection.

“You’ve got to go see Brad,” she urged, before kicking him under a shower and hurrying him off campus.

Less than ten minutes later they were outside, on their way to the parking lot. The heavens were clear. An orange glow started on the horizon. Lisa felt this might turn out to become a very long day.

“But you picked me up. You drove me here,” Williams voice sounded drained as she shuffled into the freezing morning, poked in the back by his girlfriend.

“You are taking my car. I can’t go with you anyway. Do not call him and do not stop for anything. Drive straight to the police station,” she instructed, shoving the keys into his numb hands.

“But it’s a two hour drive,” he mumbled.

A gust of wind caused some feathery snow to flurry down the trees at the borders of the parking.

“I’ll do my part, you do your part.” They exchanged a quick kiss, devoid of passion. There was no potential for romance that moment. “Drive save,” she told him, with a shiver, hugging her torso in a pointless attempt to shield herself from the cold.

He nodded, before yanking the protective cover of her windshield and wrestling with the passenger door that was frozen to the rubbers.

Lisa was still wearing her wardrobe and slippers, but that wasn’t much of an issue on campus, especially not before dawn. She waved at her car, until he was out of sight and then went back to the building.

She returned to her room, locked the door and changed the bed. As soon as it had been made tightly she laid down on top of the fresh sheets. Past experiences had taught her cleanliness made her able to focus better. She closed her eyes and did what she felt she had been Rebirthed for.

Lisa’s mind sought further into the Web, calculating all possible turns of events, considering all possible outcomes. Of course she couldn’t tell, because she wasn’t able to see anything regarding the Kid and his Birdman, until it was practically happening.

While she invaded on the future Jonathan was fumbling with his clockwork so he could return safely to Sweet Lake.

It had been a frantic visit to Nate. He hoped Marith would understand it all. The surge of information was in the back of his consciousness now, but it would all be coming back if Marith would connect with him, he reassured himself.

He stuffed the clockwork he had just set into an inside pocket, zipped his dark camouflage jacket up to his neck and jumped up and down under the veranda a little to prepare his muscles. It would be a three hour drive by car to where Nate was staying. Any Runner could do it in under an hour. This was only Jonathan’s second official run and his first one alone.

He took off like a cheetah on the savannah, leaving nothing behind but an unnerved Prophet and a cloud of frozen, white dust. If there was any way to confirm what Nate had seen their quest may be solved sooner than anyone had anticipated. Which was what the rational part of his mind told him. His gut told him something else.

He sped through the fading night, the state of his mind pressing heavily on his body. Jumping from rock to tree trunk, leaping ferns as if he was hurdling and running over plains of snow and ice his blurred surroundings couldn’t shake off the premonition that something was about to not go as planned that day.

Runners might not be able to predict the far future or to receive any meaningful prophecies from the Web, but they could inexplicably envision the near future of their path, occasionally unfolding in inconceivable sharpness. His route did not feel right this bright morning.

He kept heading North, but he tweaked and altered his way, until it felt slightly better. Soon he learned this strategy failed to take the ominous sentiments travelling through his core away, so he ran harder, faster and stealthier, calculating his path in a less predictable manner.

His black sneakers barely hit the ground after he had warmed up. A sensation as if he was flying played with his body. He never slipped, he never faltered, he never hesitated. He travelled in one fluid movement. It felt good and natural, but the dark feelings stayed with him. He started to get annoyed with them. They wouldn’t tell him what was about to happen, just that he should be worried. How was that any help? If this was how the Prophets felt every day he was even happier he hadn’t become one of them.

He tried to occupy himself with other thoughts. He wondered what any Runner’s top speed was. How fast had his great-great-grandfather been? Would he ever be able to beat Juliette? How long would he have to train for that?

Harold hadn’t been this happy since he had clawed his way into this world. Finally his master had allowed him to get closer to the creatures that were holding him back.

The Kid had picked something up, just like Nate and Will had. Nate and Will, however, had picked something up from the Web. The Kid had just sensed this was the time to tamper with their communications.

He had smelled it in the air, like a current informing him of magical and sudden progress the Pupils were making, even if they failed to realise it yet. He had sensed the Universe’s evilness signalling to him, like the lights on top of a police car would to someone in violation of the law.

That sanctimonious skeleton up in her fortress claimed the Well didn’t pick sides. Well, maybe the Well didn’t, but all the malicious bits and pieces of the Web were lining up for him and aiding him pretty neatly.

Over the last few weeks he had drawn them towards him, like a tumour requiring a constant flow of blood to feed itself. The virulent part of the fabric of reality craved him and served him at once.

Harold and Samuel had met in the dead of night in their clearing in the forest. They had the kind of sick, co-dependent relationship sane people would run from, but it had worked for them so far. Now it was time for a leap.

The Kid had turned home afterwards to let his anchor do what he did best. He would be informed by the stream of evilness when it was time to meet again.

The Birdman had proceeded to shoot up into the night sky with one beat of his massive wings. He had searched for a patch of forest that could shelter him, before he dove down again.

Now he was hanging in a cathedral of Sequoia’s, grabbing the trees right under the canopy, so he was protected from any unnecessary attention, from above and below. He was waiting for his prey like a spider in a web would await a fly.

His wings were taut with anticipation. He occasionally arched his neck, so his big, yellow eyes could keep an eye on the perimeters. The vibrations of nothingness were ecstatically jumping up and down, violently informing him of who was coming.

An awful shiver ran down Oracle’s spine. Anica’s skin crawled.

Sybil had subsided in the chair under the telescope, gazing at the stars, their position not entirely irrelevant to current and upcoming events. Her successor was decoding barely readable prophecies, scribbled on ancient parchment rolls, that Keymaker recently had send up by throwing them down.

Although they were surrounded by circular glass walls and smooth, immaculate floors draughts were rare in the controlled atmosphere under the dome. They looked each other in the eye, while their minds gravitated towards dark and questionable premonitions.

Scrambled messages and images hurried in. It was their job to make something out of it and formulate a response. These particular visions and predictions were arduous to unravel and appeared impossible to confirm.

The grey door behind Oracle swung open and hit the glass walls with an ear-shattering bang. In the opening stood a short, elderly, dishevelled man in a tweed outfit, known as Watchmaker.

Oracle and Anica eyed him expectantly, determined not to lose their poise and calm, although the next words couldn’t possibly be about the sunrise that had decided to spectacularly unfold all around them.

“One of Sweet Lake’s Runners is down.”

Jonathan felt like collapsing, until he didn’t. The side that had allowed him to become a Runner managed to take over.

He hadn’t entirely processed what had just happened yet, but he did know he was badly hurt. He didn’t allow himself to feel. He had to save every bit of strength to survive.

Blood came gushing out of his torso like water through a broken dam. He was exerting pressure on his ribcage. He didn’t want to look at the left side of his body, but he knew he had to.

His outfit was badly torn and sticking to his skin, or what was left of it. Several gaping, slashed wounds stared back at him. He saw mostly black and bright red.

He guessed this was what lethal wounds looked like. What exactly constituted as lethal to a Rebirthed human was unclear, but he didn’t want to linger around to find out. He had to contact another Pupil. The snow around him was reddening in an alarming rate.

“Awh awh awh,” he groaned and wailed. He closed his eyes, organizing his thoughts, puffing like a woman in labour.

He managed to crawl around a bit, leaning on his right arm and shoulder, kicking himself forward through the snow. From above he must have looked like a writhing fish on dry land.

That abomination of a bird, that disgrace of a bat, or whatever it was, could come back at any moment. It was monstrously big and unnecessary huffy was all he knew.

Jonathan wasn’t even sure how much damage he had been able to cause. He had chopped and stabbed at the beast like a triggered maniac.

He had known something was going to happen. Why did it have to be this?

The Birdman had come from out of nowhere. Why hadn’t he noticed that damn anchor sooner?

His blade was still clenched in his right fist. He stabbed it in the snow, hoisting himself up the mildly sloping hill he found himself dying on.

He panted heavily, while he struggled through the snow. His right arm and shoulder had started to burn a while ago.

Taking the shortest of breaks he rolled onto his back, allowing the cold snow to cool his muscles and hopefully obstruct the flow of blood somewhat with blood clots.

His left hand and arm were alarmingly tingling and increasingly started to feel numb. At that point he was pretty sure his left shoulder was badly damaged as well.

With whatever strength was left in that part of his body he cupped his left hand and shovelled snow towards his ribcage.

“AAAHW! FUCK!” He screamed, stabbing more snow with the knife in his right hand, forcing previously white precipitation into his gaping wounds.

When he was done he laid back. He felt how his eyelids started to become more like heavy rolling doors and less like clear windows into the world.

He stared up, while his eyelids fluttered a losing battle, and subconsciously noticed how the day had begun. The sun was climbing the heavens like it was an ordinary day, like Jonathan wasn’t going to lose his life, like the Chain wasn’t going to lose their battle, like the Web wasn’t going to miss out on a new Watchmaker.

Scattered rays of sunshine reached his twisted face. His face hurt as well. The skin around his left eye and on his left cheek was pulling in the opposite direction, or so it seemed. Jonathan felt no inclination to touch it and find out.

At least he would die surrounded by nature. At least he would look like an absolute fighter in his casket. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, he thought, subsiding into a very comfortable and dangerous numbness.

His took a heavy breath and after a cloud of condense escaped his tortured lungs he let go. His right hand unclenched and let go off the blade. It rested limply in the snow next to the magic weapon.

The Pupils that had the luxury of not suffering a rude awakening by the sounds of their alarms that morning got an even worse surprise. Kyle, Anton, Juliette and James sat up straight in their respective bedrooms, almost simultaneously.

Their beds had just the right temperature, their cushions the perfect shape to support their heads and necks and they all felt there was a great injustice involved in being this shaken up at a time they could have very well still been sleeping.

Marith had been up. She usually got up at the same time Lieke and Nick did, so they could have breakfast together, before they would separate to go to school, work and, in Marith’s case, do whatever.

The restless, icky feeling that had been plaguing her, since she had left her bed to use the restroom in the middle of the night, was still with her. It prevented her from focusing on her cello practice or anything else, so she had been wandering aimlessly around the mansion, waiting for something, anything to come towards her.

It promptly and inexplicably did. This time it wasn’t a stream of information from the Web. It was a bucket of ice water slapped into her face in the shape of her circular, shining horological instrument.

She just wasn’t sure what to do with it. Why was it making these alarming sounds? Had she dropped it? Was it supposed to do this? Was this a test, as in one of their practice rounds?

She turned it around in her hands and felt its temperature rising rapidly. The clockwork was heating up like a damaged battery in a smartphone could do.

She held it between the tips of her fingers and peeked under the dull, greyish clouds. The hands and pointers of the clock were quickly turning, not indicating or explaining anything at all, except that they served a purpose by alarming any Pupil that was in possession of a clockwork by the hands of Watchmaker.

The heavens were clear. The sun was ablaze and shone down on the towering trees, colouring them into red pillars in an otherwise white world.

Jonathan was disturbed by something and slapped a handful of snow into his face, rubbing it all over, to properly wake himself up.

Persistent burning and buzzing sensations in the right pocket of his track suit had helped him escape from his dangerous nap in the middle of nowhere.

He laboriously perched up and peered around. The first thing he noticed was his blood, but also the congealed, thicker blood of the Birdman. The trail of the beast’s blood led away and only his own blood led to him, indicating that the beast had, as of yet, not come back for him.

How long had he been out? He squinted his eyes and looked up. Judging by the intensity of the light shining down on him and the position of the sun relative to the canopy of the forest it hadn’t been too long.

“I’ve got to go… I’ve got to,” he mumbled and wheezed.

He had felt how the sum of all horrors had sucked Nate’s message from him. Or at least he had tried to. Jonathan wasn’t sure how much of their communications exactly he had been exposed to, but even if he had only seen a face or a set of other tiny details it was bad. It could jeopardize everything they were fighting for.

Pain was just a feeling, like happiness and joy are feelings. If he could deal with any other feeling in the world he could deal with pain, he decided.

He grabbed the knife that he had parked in the snow before and continued to crawl and haul himself up the slope, closer to some rocks he had had his eye on before.

Pain was just a concept that existed in the Web, he kept telling himself. The Web, that vibrating blanket that connected their reality to every other reality out there. It was time for him to take control of his reality and get the hell out of those woods. He owed it to the Web, he owed it to his Chain, he owed it to his parents.

He was severely out of breath and with every movement he seemed to lose more blood. The pain was indescribable, as if every inch of the left side of his body was continuously stabbed with burning pokers as he struggled on.

As soon as he had squeezed himself in between two boulders and felt he was fairly sheltered to a new attack he fished his phone from a wet inside pocket of his jacket. The screen was severely cracked, but his face felt as if it had been cut and damaged beyond recognition anyway.

He looked for the right contact. It wasn’t far down in the list of recent calls. He held the phone with his right hand to his right ear. The left side of his body had given up entirely. It felt numb and practically paralyzed.

He prayed his Mage would pick up. She wasn’t exactly glued to her phone like most of their peers.

The pointers had stopped racing over the face of the clock. The hands and wheels had made a clear and decisive, rattling click and appeared to be indicating a person and a location.

Marith was still angling the hot clockwork between her fingertips to peer under the limp, lifeless clouds and decipher the message when her phone rang. She wasn’t in the habit of picking it up when it rang, but she was aware that the call was very likely connected to whatever was happening in her hands.

She sprinted over the balustrade to her bedroom, where her phone was almost eternally hooked to the charger.

“Duchess…” Jonathan brought out and then paused. “I know we’re not supposed to call… and shit, but… I’m hurt. It’s pretty bad…” He felt like breaking down into sobs, an urge that rarely came over him.

Marith heard him sigh and then some rumblings in the background.

“Are you still running?”

He didn’t sound like it. He sounded as if he was crawling or rolling over the ground. She frowned, intensely listening to the distorted sounds on the other end of the line. He seemed out of breath and Runners were never out of breath.

“I was running… towards you, but I was attacked. Listen… Aaargh! Fucking b…”

The line was disconnected.

“Jonathan!” Marith screamed in vain.

The hairs in her neck and on her arms stood up. She closed her eyes. There was only one way to find out where he was.”

“Brad! Jonathan just called. He’s hurt. It think he’s fighting the Birdman. You need to locate him!” She practically yelled into her phone, while running through the tiled hallway that led to the garage, with only one arm in a sleeve of her winter coat.

Writing the symbols and coding on a piece of paper and deciphering it like she was battling Greek and Latin back in high school was too time consuming, too cumbersome under the circumstances.

“That explains the clockwork,” Brad mumbled.

Marith could hear his mind was already somewhere else. Sensing Jonathan in the back of his mind, now attempting to pinpoint his exact location.

“I am on my way,” she added hastily, unlocking the car. “I’ll come to you.”

“He isn’t far. The other three are headed my way as well… and Will too,” he said the last part slightly surprised.

Marith was in Gene’s car, impatiently waiting for the doors to roll up far enough for the car to be able to rush underneath.

“Yeah, I texted them,” was the last thing she hurriedly spoke into the phone, before dropping it on the passenger’s seat and speeding off with a loud roar echoing in the immaculate, grey space behind her.

“Vanessaaa! Vaness,” Kyle had never ran this fast.

He wasn’t used to running anywhere at all, so this sprint felt like a personal attack. His oesophagus was burning, his muscles were cramping and his eyes bulged involuntarily.

He could see her silhouette on the other side of the parking lot. Unaware of what had happened earlier that morning.

Vanessa had been headed to her new place of work, at the merged community that was now called the Tri-Lake Primary School. She had just parked her car and fished her bag from the passenger’s seat. Now that she was walking towards the schoolyard she mostly heard happy sounds of children excited to play outside in the snow.

Until a warm sensation, emanating from her bag pulled her attention to her other job. She searched for her clockwork. It was vibrating, buzzing and burning when she it held carefully between her fingers to examine it.

“Vaaa-nes-saaa!” Her Prophet sounded like an air horn and that wasn’t exactly reassuring either.

She turned around and saw Kyle clumsily sprinting towards her, his skinny legs wobbling all over the parking lot.

“What’s going on?” She asked quietly, staring at him with dark, questioning eyes.

Kyle came to a painful stop before her and bend over, his hands clasping his upper legs, making unnatural retching sounds, before managing to explain anything to her.

“Jonathan got attacked by the Birdman…” he managed, going right back to panting and gagging.

Vanessa grabbed a bottle of water from her bag and handed it to him. He drank greedily.

“Don’t we have a Runner for this?” She asked while Kyle drank.

“Went to Brad,” Kyle managed, between gulps. “He knows Jonathan’s location.”

“I know,” Vanessa said patiently in a level tone of voice, before a thought struck her. “How do you know about Jonathan?” She inquired as calm as she could manage.

“Oracle,” he answered, still slightly out of breath. “Jonathan… was running from Nate to Marith.”

“If we kill the Birdman now, the Kid will find another way,” she urged, jumping to the only logical outcome.

“That is not really our main concern for now.”

“What is our main concern then?”

“He attacked Jonathan and now he might tell the Kid what Nate showed to Jonathan.”

“How do they even communicate? Hasn’t he told the Kid already?”

“That’s unclear, but we have to try and stop it.”

“Is Nate’s message even worth it?” Vanessa wondered, in a more demanding tone.

Kyle was silent for a moment and his eyes moved dreamily, drawn to seemingly nothing, while another set of messages or visions came it. Vanessa had never been entirely sure what the communications between Oracle and her Prophets looked like.

He reached for her underarms and gave Vanessa the edited version of a message that Oracle had passed along.

Nate thinks that the new Watchmaker is some kid in the clinic, but nobody is sure yet. Of course the Kid can never know.

Weren’t we using the new Watchmaker to lure the Kid out? Vanessa remarked wisely.

Yeah, but our Chain isn’t complete yet, so the odds are against us if we fight him right now, and if the child isn’t the new Watchmaker, for whatever reason, everybody goes after an innocent child.

Okay, clear, Vanessa answered curtly. Where’s Amber?

She called in sick this morning, is all I know. She’s probably doing what we’re doing. Let’s get going.

‘It’s Jonathan. Meet at Brad’s!’ was what Marith had texted Juliette, Anton and James.

Luckily, Runners didn’t need much words or details to understand what was going on or to know what was expected of them. They had been fast, incredibly so. When Marith had reached the cul-de-sac that Brad lived in, after adding all sorts of traffic violations to her name, the Runners were headed in her direction, fanning out all over town.

She slowed down briefly when she saw the blurry lines coming towards her car and so did James, Anton and Juliette. Marith saw their faces, tense and determined. They nodded at each other, before each Pupil accelerated again. The Runners were holding the bows and arrows from the Corridors.

The lights of Brad’s truck flashed when Marith brought the car she was in to a creaking halt in front of his house. She hurried out, slapped the door and locked it while running towards the driveway.

Somewhere above Sweet Lake a blackbird fell from the sky. It was flying away from Sound Lake just before it got kidnapped, sucked into oblivion, to be spewed back into its own, Earthly dimension mere seconds later.

The bird felt befuddled and slightly disoriented, until it remembered what it was that it was supposed to do and sped away into the afternoon.