24

Marith was awkwardly holding Brad’s antique rifle and learned how incredibly heavy it was. He had a handgun on him, safely in its holster.

“So what’s the plan? Are you sure we’re going to reach Jonathan first?”

They were racing over a deserted country road that Marith hadn’t known existed, in a direction that only Brad could determine to be the right one.

“The Runners have to run the intel we have to their Mages and Prophets first. Let’s hope the Prophets have received some clarity from above, by the time their Runners intercept them.”

Marith noticed that Brad was more focused than she had expected him to be. Under strained circumstances he wasn’t a man of many words.

He kept his eyes on the gravel road in front of them, looking out for bumps and potholes. It hadn’t even been bituminized.

He unexpectedly spun the steering wheel and before Marith knew it she was bouncing through the truck, tossed around like crouton in a salad.

The heavy vehicle was gliding and skidding through the snow. Grasping for a hold.

They brusquely ended up in some sort of ditch. The lay of the land was difficult to determine when it consisted of white slopes with the occasional bulges.

They had both been wearing their seatbelts, but Marith was practically hugging the dashboard by the time the pick-up had come to a full stop.

“What now?” Marith almost hissed, unable to hide her irritation.

“We worry about the car later,” Brad decided. “Jonathan isn’t far,” he shared, before grabbing something from the backseat and jumping out of his truck.

Marith took his example after struggling briefly to get out of the seatbelt and to get the heavy, elongated rifle out of the vehicle.

Brad had already wandered into the woods with a bundle of fabric under his arm. Marith slapped the car door behind her, circled the car and followed him. With each step she sunk deeper into the snow and decided to stop lifting her legs ridiculously high after a while and just plough through it, like Olive would. She searched for Brads trench and walked in that one.

The forest was excruciatingly silent. There was no sign of birds, other wildlife or even a gust of wind.

Marith had picked up the pace and now hiked right behind Brad. “How much further do you think it is?” She whispered in his ear.

“Not far…” he mumbled back, over his shoulder.

“The quiet is a bad sign, right?”

“Definitely.” He nodded, reaching for the rifle Marith had absentmindedly carried for him.

The bundle of cloth from under his arm was foisted upon her. It turned out to be a blanket.

“What now?” The more shaky and fearful parts of her asked.

“Do your thing,” Brad urged, after a few more minutes of struggling through the wilderness.

They had reached an overgrown section of the forest where the growing layer of snow was less domineering. The canopy of the sequoia’s had more or less provided a roof for anything that lived or moved under it. However, the steep gradient of the area had provided them with a new challenge.

She closed her eyes and send her snares out into their surroundings. Without speaking she reached for a wrist, which was swiftly offered to her. She let him see what she received.

No words had to be wasted on their next course of action. They spurted forwards, while sharp daylight shot through the foliage above them.

There had been a loud, heavy and languid heartbeat that moved, up and down, and a heartbeat that was, in comparison, as fast and light as that of a mouse. That second, human heartbeat did not belong to a running member of their species. It was panicked and stationary.

Brad had seen the route that the vibrating chords had taken to the heartbeats, before she found them, and was still in the lead. They ran in between rocks the size of cars and in the shadows of trees the length of skyscrapers, over frozen grounds and under blue skies.

Marith was amazed the other Mage had memorized the course flawlessly and at once. If she had been alone she would have had to stop several times to deploy the strings again and adjust the route she was taking. Of course, Brad could locate Jonathan by himself. She only had to apply her talent to see if the Birdman was still with him, which appeared to be the case.

A few more boulders and inclines, a few more fallen trees and other hurdles, a few more bends and curves and they found themselves stumbling onto the crime scene.

Marith halted abruptly as her eyes registered the bloodshed in horror. Brad never stopped running. He introduced himself to the anchor for a second time, guns blazing.

The beast stood on a relatively low and wide rock formation, peeking downwards into a slit, nimbly turning his horrific excuse of a head in all sorts of ways to take a look at the person who had taken shelter there.

All four of his monstrous claws, now the size of coffee tables, rested on the boulders unable to fit into the opening. He snarled at his victim and scratched the rocks with talons bigger than the blades the Runners were carrying.

Blood was running down the stones in swelling streams. That was either Jonathan’s work or Jonathan’s blood, Marith thought, freezing and shuddering as that comprehension dawned on her.

The Birdman remembered Brad and his rifle. With one aggressive flap of his wings he sped upwards. The bubble of air that billowed around the rocks caused Marith to falter and drop the blanket she had been carrying.

He had reached the canopy with a loud clap of his leathery sails before either of them could blink, but Brad kept firing to make sure he would flee far away for now.

The anchor had surely grown, since the last time they had come across each other, but those bullets hadn’t gotten any less painful.

The gunshots were loud, but not as loud as the objections of the bat that had his mind set on the Runner. His shrill screeches sounded like a derailing train and Marith knew for a fact what that sounded like.

“Oh, God, Jonathan!” She dove towards her Runner, while Brad kept scanning the canopy of the forest for any sign of another incoming attack.

Jonathan had squeezed himself between the boulders the Birdman had just painted with blood. Marith saw his black sneakers sticking out from the slit in the rock formation now, but even if they hadn’t she could have easily followed the river of blood in the snow. The place looked like a battle field.

“Duchess,” he groaned.

She staggered back almost immediately after laying eyes on him.

“Looks bad… doesn’t it?” Jonathan panted and swallowed heavily, looking at her for clues on the state of his body.

He laid slanted between the frozen geological giants, resting against another piece of schist. He had found himself a cold, uncomfortable bear chair in the middle of nature to have some protection from his assailer.

Thick beats of sweat were running down his mutilated face. Marith noticed how he trembled and looked panicked through his one good eye.

She didn’t want to look at his wounds any more than he did, but she could hardly ignore them. The loose skin on his face, baring the teeth and molars in his jaws, his left eyelid torn apart, revealing the remains of an eye that would surely turn blind, if it wasn’t already. The claw-mark ran all the way up, to the top of his skull, where his skin was wavering in all the wrong directions.

“I’ve seen you in better condition,” Marith mustered. “Brad?” She stammered, almost immediately.

They had to get him to the truck.

“Yeah,” he turned around and joined them. “Where’s that blanket I gave you?”

Marith pointed in the direction they had come from. She had unintentionally dropped it before. Brad disappeared briefly, while Marith helped Jonathan out of the groove.

“We’ll wrap him in this. Together we can carry him,” Brad decided curtly, when he came back, not at all flustered.

He must have seen a lot of horrific things in the police force, Marith thought. It had dulled him, which came in handy in situations like this.

They wrapped Jonathan like a burrito, leaving pieces of fabric on both sides they could grasp. Without hesitation they hurried down the same path they had just taken.

The rifle was with Jonathan, just as his blade, still clenched in his right hand. He would never be able to lift or fire a weapon in this state, but neither could Marith or Brad, while hauling their Runner down that side of the mountain.

They moved fast and swiftly, praying the avian abomination wasn’t following them for another round.

Jonathan subsided in and out of consciousness. Marith tried to keep his heartbeat steady at the forty beats per minute she had noticed on each of the Runners. Unfortunately her influence on this organ often slipped and had to be reinstated regularly, since carrying and helping a patient at the same time was hard.

Marith’s underarms burned and her fingers felt twisted, grasping the fabric in an iron clutch. Some parts they shuffled and slipped down, fighting to keep their balance and eventually land on their feet again to keep running.

On the narrow parts Marith and Brad alternated position, to ease their muscles somewhat. They barely spoke, they just did.

When they arrived down below, where Brad had crashed the truck parallel to the gravel road, they entered the trench they had just struggled to make on the way up. They practically ran the last part.

“We have to put him down for a second,” Brad stated, while he lowered their cargo, to search for his keys.

“Don’t… bother. Put me in the back,” Jonathan instructed. Their running and the cold of the snow, he was now placed in, had woken him up again.

“Okay, but I’ll stay with you,” Marith insisted.

He nodded.

Brad lowered the tailgate and together they lifted him in. Jonathan crawled over the ribbed surface of the loading space and Marith jumped in after him to make a provisional bed with the blanket.

“Brad, do you mind?” Marith asked him with big eyes. Her hands were resting on the rifle. It was in the back of the truck with them. “In case he comes back again… I might have the best shot from here.”

“Of course.” Brad nodded pragmatic. “You’ll need these too.” He fished a bag of ammo from an inside pocket of his bulky coat. “Can you handle a gun?”

“I know the basics.” She sort of half-shook, half-nodded a non-reassuring answer to him.

If Marith wasn’t mistaking she saw a hint of admiration in Brad’s eyes when she asked to use the rifle.

Brad closed the tailgate, before taking a seat in the cabin.

“Okay, guys…” He sighed, scratching his head. “Getting this thing out of the ditch could be bumpy,” he shared.

With a roaring engine and some jolts and bounces the four by four crawled out of the gully. Marith tried to keep Jonathan in position and just hoped the noise wouldn’t draw too much attention to their location.

The truck sped over the gravel path towards the main road around town again.

The blood from Jonathans wounds was seeping through the blanket she had wrapped around him again. She had taken a seat right next to him, on his left, with her back to the cabin of the truck.

Her fingers had found the contact points in his wrist.

The skin on his left underarm was surprisingly intact, given the state of the rest of his body. She had closed her eyes and did what she could for him. Neither of them was exactly sure of what that encompassed.

They soon entered the main road, which was a blessing for Marith and Jonathan. The car travelled smoothly over the asphalt now and the bright sunshine shone uncertainly down on them.

It wasn’t long before the seething Birdman made another appearance, once again he seemingly came from out of nowhere. Marith didn’t understand how he kept surprising them. With a body that size and wings with that magnitude he should be easier to foresee, especially in mid-flight.

This time he shot from the wall of trees that bordered the roads around town, like a cannonball through the bow of a galleon, and was immediately in pursuit of the truck, making skilful use of his wings, like a sailor would use the canvas on the masts of the boat to cross an ocean.

Marith slapped on the little window to the cabin, to alert Brad. He had already noticed the beast and immediately sped up to a dangerous velocity.

The wind from his flapping wings thundered towards them and flicked Marith’s hair obnoxiously around her face.

She dug her heels into the trenches of the ribbed flooring to brace herself. Some courage managed to crawl up from the dark pits of her insecurities and forced her to pick the rifle up and use it as intended.

This otherworldly monstrosity was nothing less than a very pissed, very black, flying polar bear, she assured herself. And this very pissed, very black, flying polar bear had to die today. She knew the rifle couldn’t do it, but it felt good handling such a powerful weapon against something that made her furious beyond her imagination. This thing, whatever the fuck it was, triggered her more than her catastrophic childhood or the gut-wrenching homelessness amongst her peers or any other injustice she had to face regularly.

Marith opened the gun, which automatically ejected the empty shells. They danced through the pickup. Jonathan held the bag with ammo with trembling hands. He managed to fish two new ones out of it. Marith reloaded, closed the action, took aim half-heartedly and shot at a venture, while her hands bathed in cold sweat.

The backlash against her shoulder was significant, but there were worse things. Bruising her behind in the back of a pickup or getting torn to shreds by an intruder from another dimension happened to come to mind.

She lifted the barrel of the impossibly heavy gun, aimed at their soaring assailer and took another shot. It was a good one. Jonathan cheered weakly, then realized his body was too damaged to celebrate anything at all, maybe ever again.

The Birdman didn’t leave, but also didn’t dare to fly closer to them. She patted Jonathan on his leg and clicked the rifle open again, not losing sight of their attacker. She felt her Runner push something against her right arm. She got two new shells from him, reloaded and continued to keep the massive bat at a tolerable distance.

The flying horror occasionally expressed his distinct displeasure with this course of events by letting out mind-boggling screams that pounded on her eardrums like fireworks would never be capable of doing.

Marith could see some familiar road signs and turns flash by in the sea of trees that they sailed through. Sweet Lake wasn’t far anymore.

The Mage kept shooting nilly willy at the lorry sized monster. It didn’t come close enough for her to actually hit him. He was waiting her out. At some point she had to be out of ammo and then he could tear them apart for the last piece of the puzzle.

Like an angry cloud the Birdman obstructed them from daylight. The truck sped forwards in near-darkness. Marith could now clearly see how worn and torn his wings were. The patagium between some of the bones was almost completely shot and cut to pieces. Yet he was still floating through the air, chasing them in a volatile fury.

Marith sat trembling in the back of the truck, fumbling with the gun.

Opening the barrel to reload once more she contently noticed she was getting faster and defter with it. She patted Jonathan on the leg again, to alert him, but no immediate response followed.

She turned to look at her Runner. He shook his wounded head at her and, with difficulty, raised an empty piece of plastic. They were out of ammo.

While the realization hit that the bag was indeed empty and that Brad had the only other firearm still on him, she feverishly slapped the slideable window behind her.

“Braaad!” She screamed as she molested the little pane in the back of the cabin.

It was the first time she had brought out a sound. She realized she had been silent the whole time. No screaming, no yelling. She knew that would only rile her up further, unnecessarily raising the swirling panic within her, that she subsequently had to deal with and then waste her energy on.

Brad took some unexpected turns, but stayed on the main road, because there were no upcoming turns or exits he could take to escape this route to Sweet Lake. Jonathan and Marith were unhappily thrown through the back of the blue vehicle. Marith’s slippery hands could barely hold on to the weapon.

The black creature twisted his neck and looked at her with one blazing, yellow eye. They stared at each other, for a few undecided moments. Then it appeared to be laughing at her, a scorning raspy, throaty sound.

She stared at the gaping hole in the middle of what was supposedly it’s face, filled with spikes the size of butcher knives, placed randomly in his jaws like a modern art installation.

It was time. Harold dove down with his four claws stretched out to them.

Marith was frozen in horror for less than a second and then jumped on top of the unconscious Jonathan. It was Jonathan he wanted, not her. He knew something she didn’t. This was all she could do to slow the beast down.

Meanwhile Brad was still making evasive manoeuvres that only bothered his cargo. Their pursuer was not impressed, just highly annoyed.

The beating of his wings came closer and stopped. Marith shut her eyes and mentally prepared to be ripped to shreds. So far as mentally preparing to die an unnecessary and painful death was possible.

He would likely first rip open her back and cause damage to her skull, were her central nervous system was. She wondered how much pain she would feel. He would probably cut those nerves instantly. Then he would throw her out of the vehicle to grab Jonathan. Would he kill Jonathan too?

Probably.

A great silence washed over them. At this point Marith wasn’t sure Jonathan was entirely conscious or not, but a tingling sensation caught her attention. She could actually feel two heartbeats coming towards her in the Web, quite like Brad could feel people’s minds existing in it. She deployed the strings in her mind and noticed they had a healthy, recognizable quality to them. These hearts were beating around 45 beats per minute, but only because their owners were exerting themselves.

She reigned her chords in to solely focus on stabilizing Jonathan’s heartbeat again. She closed her eyes, unsure if the Birdman could be stopped in time. Despite the turmoil in her mind, she managed to keep Jonathan’s heartrate at roughly 40 beats per minute. She did start to wonder how much blood a Runner could miss, before losing hold of being alive. Just stabilizing his heart wouldn’t do much if he had nearly bled out.

In a distant world Marith heard a big car honking. She knew it was Brad. He stopped zigzagging. She sat up on top of her dying Runner. The wind thundered around her face, pulling violently at her coat and her hair.

She noticed the silhouettes of Juliette and James racing past both sides of the truck, bows and arrows drawn. Everything that was happening slowed down at once and gave her the immense kind of clarity that would only occur once or twice per year, before she had been Rebirthed.

The arrows soaring past the truck, the empty shells dancing all around them, Brad driving like a maniac, Juliette and James aggressively running at their assaulter. She could see all the little details now, as if they bared themselves especially to her.

The chaos gave her an odd, empowered feeling, as if she was in control of the situation, which some obfuscated parts of her knew she wasn’t. More shallow slices informed her she had capabilities that reached beyond the logicalities that ruled this world. Sadly she was too afraid to apprize those just yet.

“Miessus Parker!” Anton started, with the doorknob still in his hand. He had ran to the Bellevue building from Ambers house, without breaking a sweat or showing any hint of breathlessness.

“Yes, Anton?” Miss Parker wondered, turning around with a befuddled blackbird on the index finger of her left hand. The animal was twittering and singing, but miss Parker was easily capable of receiving several streams of information at once.

She was wearing her winter garments inside, since most of her windows were open day and night. Anton ignored all the strangeness going on in her apartment. He had come for some very important answers to questions every Pupil had at the moment, but hadn’t thought of asking sooner.

“Is there any chance the Birdman has told the Kid already?”

That would imply they had to rethink their entire strategy. They might have to abduct an innocent child and fight their adversary before having finished the Chain.

“No, dear, they have to be physically connected. Like you and your Prophet, like me and my birds.”

“So there is only one course of action?”

“Prevent them from getting close and finish that devil!” Lucille told him with fierceness in her eyes and anger in her voice. She hadn’t been this sure about anything in decades. The blackbird tweeted and clapped his wings in agreement.

“We bring order to chaos, we serve an imperfect Web,” she continued sternly, but in a more explanatory tone of voice. “We are trying to make sense of it all. The Kid and his anchor are ripping the Web apart. Kill that creature, before they rob us of the only child that can repair reality.”

“Thanks, that’s all we need to know.” He left the apartment without a trace of ever having been there.

“Good luck, dear,” Lucille said to the empty doorway.

Brad elegantly swerved onto the property of the lake house and gracefully rammed the shutter door, breaking right before slamming into the workbench in the back of the garage.

Marith wasn’t sure Samuel would be home, but she mostly didn’t care. It wasn’t his house, not really.

She jumped out of the vehicle and started looking around, yanking stuff from shelves and tossing them around, to have a good look at the walls behind all the rubbish.

None of the mess they made mattered, as long as they could leave their current situation.

Brad had crawled to the rear seat of the truck and had handed her the keyring Keymaker had given him during their tour in the Corridors through the slideable window in the back.

Marith sought a hole, an opening, a slit, and she started to become more and more frantic as her search continued. Samuel could come and take a look at any moment at which point she would have a really hard time explaining why the roller door that separated the insides of the garage from nature was clamped between a bumper and a workbench.

The garage had been in desperate need of some deep-cleaning for about a decade and a half. Her mother had been a borderline hoarder and her father had never been allowed to touch anything. Currently, it was filled with shelves, closets and cabinets, stuffed with important paperwork and necessary tools, but also with junk to decorate the house, old toys and games and stuff that belonged in a recycling bin.

“Which one?” Marith asked distraught, fumbling with the cool metal objects, hoping it would tell her something about the keyhole she was looking for.

“The smallest, I believe,” Brad answered, through the tiny opened window, raising his voice. He couldn’t step out of the car. The truck practically filled all the leftover space in the garage and there was no feasibility for the doors to be opened.

Marith found that one key stood out in shape and size. The other keys were all quite similar. This one was small. About the size of a key she had recently used to pick something up in the garage. More or less the same shape of that same key she had been forced to hand over to the womanhating incel that now rented the place.

The only keyhole this crenelated piece of metal could possibly fit in, was the one that would open the electric garage doors. It was unlikely and at the same time worth a shot.

She separated the little key from the bigger ones and shoved it into the metal slit in the white box in the wall. She did so out of sheer desperation, but it worked.

Clicking and rumbling sounds informed them that this was in fact the designated slot. She sought eye-contact with Brad. He smiled and held a thumb up, before clambering back to the driver’s seat.

She heard a familiar groan coming from the back of the truck.

“Don’t worry, Jon, we are pretty safe right now,” Brad informed him.

“How?” Jonathan perked himself up on his right arm and stared glassily at the havoc around them and rubbed the lesser damaged parts of his face.

“We are going to enter the Corridors, my friend. Nothing to cheer a man up like some running, some fighting and some escaping, isn’t it?” Brad spoke up from behind the wheel.

“W-w-with the truck?” Jonathan stammered.

The square space they were in started to wobble. Marith yanked the key out of the hole.

“With the truck!” Confirmed Brad exuberant, in his undying enthusiasm for near death experiences. Marith didn’t completely understand his kind of crazy, but she admired his commitment to it.

“I wasn’t aware the word ‘safe’ could be used in this context!” Jonathan blared, fully charged with adrenalin this time.

“Everything is possible in Sweet Lake. You must know that by now.” Brad grinned over his shoulder.

“Maarth!” Jonathan yelled. He was completely awake.

“Now!” Brad added, as the floor they were on started to sink.

Marith joined Jonathan in the back of the truck again with the keyring.

As it turned out the whole of the insides of the garage, including the cabinets, workbench, some bicycles and all the inflatable sea-animals from her childhood came down with them. The friction with the walls caused the cabinets and shelves to fall inwards, on top of the truck.

The whole platform made a mind-numbing noise and the speed at which they plummeted downwards wasn’t predicting much greatness about the way they would land.

Marith and Jonathan were fairly unprotected in the loading space. Marith rolled on top of her wounded Runner, once more. He was still breathing heavily, occasionally groaning and moaning.

By the time their floor had descended all the way down into the Corridors with a loud bang and a blow to everyone’s spinal cord Marith felt a warmish, sticky wetness permeating her clothes.

“You didn’t cut yourself, right? With the knife?”

She felt how Jonathan shook his head. “No, no, but his claws…” he sighed and rolled his eyes in the most unnatural way Marith had ever seen anyone do.

“I know,” she whispered. “I’ve seen them.”

The cabinets that had caved inwards had formed a tipi over the car. Marith rolled on her back on the wet, ribbed flooring and pushed them back with her legs. First on one side, then on the other.

The cabinets had emptied themselves on the garage floor and in the pickup. She noticed how bitter-sweet childhood memories in various stages of decay were accompanying them reluctantly.

One thing was clear, this was not an often used entrance to the Corridors. The platform may have made its maiden trip that day.

Marith sat up in the pickup and looked up at a red canoe, still hanging on the garage ceiling, very, very high up. As soon as Brad sped the truck off the platform it moved up again, creaking and complaining.

They heard a loud clank on the platform that was travelling upwards to be reunited with the rest of the garage. It was the roller door dislocating itself from the workbench.

The lights came on as soon as the truck landed safely in the Corridors. In the chaos Marith could distinguish more crap from her past. A teddy bear with one eye stared at her in utter horror, next to Jonathans bleeding face. Report cards were sprawled all around them, now bathing in Jonathan’s blood. A wreath made out of pine cones, with a red and gold bow attached to it, was immediately hurtled out of the car by Marith.

The bear could stay, but anything that her mother had been obsessed with, to the detriment of the rest of the family, such as interior design, had to go. She wished she could burn it, but there was no time.

Brad skilfully and swiftly backed up through the hallway that would lead them to the atrium. Marith made sure she wasn’t blocking his view through the rear-view mirror and slumped back, next to Jonathan. She held his wrist again, but kept her eyes open this time. They couldn’t afford being caught off-guard by something else, especially not in an underground maze, while in a hurry.

The corridor they were speeding through was pretty well-lit. The lights on the truck and adjusted to the walls around them informed Marith off a black hole at the end of the tunnel.

Without slowing down Brad confidently steered towards it.

The icy draft under Sweet Lake prickled Marith’s face more than the air above. She squeezed her eyes into little slits in an attempt to see better. The black hole remained a growing square space, but a greyish source of light seemed to exist within it. Marith realized it was sunshine seeping through the water of the lake.

As soon as they entered the stale, cold atmosphere of the atrium the temperature became glacial. The lights sprung on and as sudden as that Brad saw a four-poster bed appear in his mirror. Their dextrous driver slammed the brakes and turned the car around in one smooth movement, before heading to a wide hallway on their left.

“Where are the remainders?” Sybil inquired, authoritative.

Watchmaker closed his eyes and searched for his instruments. He had already located the clockworks of nine Pupils. Two Prophets remained out of town. Six Pupils were together, working themselves up in the woods of the tri-lake area. One was driving a car. Three were missing.

Those three had left the playing field the others were on. They appeared to be on a mission of their own.

He looked up to her in confusion. “In the Corridors.”

Oracle nodded curtly. She had a general idea of what they were doing, or collecting, down there.

Oracle, Anica and Watchmaker stood on the shining white, circular flooring of the Clock in the Sky. They alternated staring at each other while sharing the information that came to them.

They were standing in the command centrum of the Web. It was their duty to lead and direct the actions of the Pupils, advising them and adjusting their course when necessary.

“Do you really think they’ve found my successor this time?” Watchmaker asked, filled with dubiety and hope. “I mean, we thought several times before we had a contender…” his voice died away when he saw Oracles face.

She didn’t close her eyes, but her gaze was out of this world, off to another dimension. It had shifted to the Flow of visions and prophecies every living Prophet on the planet send her.

“To me he is an unlikely challenger of your position, but every meaningful vision, hunch and coincidence appears to be swaying in his favour today,” she shared monotonous, looking at the old architect again, with a rare and sly smile on her face. “We shall see, sometimes time provides definite answers.”

Part of Oracle’s mind had wandered off to another urgent matter. As any Oracle should her mind had split itself and on one side of the partition she was now preparing a message. On the other side of the partition she was still talking to Watchmaker, who had gotten used to her ethereal vagueness. On a third side she stood in continuous touch with Anica, which didn’t require hand-wrist contact in their safe space.

Oracle put a set of messages through to the Prophets and her sister. Anica still had to get used to the fact that those communications didn’t involve eyes turning milky, eyes trembling or even eyes rolling in their sockets. Eye-wise and otherwise their messaging was invisible.

The Clock kept turning as if their dimension of origins wasn’t going through an earth-shattering crisis.

The Corridors had been deserted until Brad had entered them with his monstrosity of an SUV and its boisterous engine.

He had parked the truck despairingly on the other end of the atrium, towards the hallway that would hopefully lead to the platform up to the clinic. He had cracked open a window and hung halfway over the door, trying to focus on locating something, or, rather, some things.

Marith sat up and looked down at the man she had been splayed on top of quite a lot that day. She took a better look at his mangled body. It looked bad, really bad. She was no doctor, but his left lung was definitely perforated. The left side of his face was mutilated beyond recognition. His shoulder looked dislocated, but she didn’t intend on touching it. He wheezed and gurgled.

The amount of blood that seemed to be existing outside of his arteries and veins, while Jonathan was still more or less amongst the living, left Marith flabbergasted.

She flinched, doing her best to keep his panicked, hammering heart under control in a futile attempt to stabilize him. She really wasn’t made for this. She had the utmost respect for anyone working in the medical field, but this was not for her.

Although she had recently become able to influence the workings of hearts form a distance, she had placed her hands on his chest, hoping it would have a stronger effect. This was not a healthy heart any longer, after the Birdman had been done with him.

The blood was seeping through her fingers and Jonathan panicked further by staring at her distraught face. He was still bleeding from his left side.

“Why, Jonathan?!” Marith almost yelled at him, mostly because he was starting to become less and less responsive to her and their surroundings.

He stared blankly at her. His right eye was reddening as well.

“Nate.”

She shifted so she could grasp both his wrists.

“What did Nate tell you?” She asked, afraid sharing wordless information through a secured connection was harder now that the Runner was severely weakened.

“He thinks you were right,” Jonathan whispered and swallowed, probably more blood than saliva.

“About what?” She whispered back, leaning closer to him.

Jonathan initiated the Flow. He shared the information he had with her.

Converting signals and visions into words imposed limits. Every Pupil had learned that sharing inner musings and predictions with images and sensations, instead of through a spoken language, opened up new possibilities, was much faster and more vivid.

Marith looked Jonathan in the eye, while Brad went from locating the right chambers to peering restlessly at them through the mirrors.

The message Nate had given him had been cloaked, wrapped in mist.

Images of Etienne crossed her third eye. She had been right.

Do you think the Birdman saw?

I think he saw enough. He grasped for air and for the first time that day Jonathan looked like he was going to cry.

We really need to kill the anchor then.

This was a personal vision from Nate. Oracle hadn’t confirmed yet. Then why had Jonathan been running to their Prophet?

He called me, Jonathan answered her question.

Right when Marith wanted to tell Jonathan that none of this was his fault, that no one could have foreseen any of this, a force greater than both of them took a hold. It felt as if they were being hijacked, as if this stream of energy had been looking for them and was grasping at them, now that it had found them.

Marith felt as if a rug was pulled out from under them, like she had left her bed too early in the morning and the blood was leaving her head in a rush. She lost sight of Jonathan and instead saw colourful blots and spiralling clouds. She felt lightheaded, like falling down from the sky right through a storm.

The lines between reality and imagination were shifting, almost completely disappearing, before their actual world came swirling back.

“Nice flowers,” Jonathan mumbled, groggy.

Marith fiercely blinked her eyes, ignored his muttering and focused on the most urgent matter first.

She slammed the little, sliding window again. Brad, who had witnessed the whole ordeal through the rear-view mirror, eyed her questioningly.

They had to get the Perpetual Arrow and the Sunshine. Everything had to happen now.

“We need to take him down now! Before he tells the Kid!” She stared back at Brad. He didn’t really understand the details, but he was well aware of the urgency.

Marith realized her yelling was quite dramatic, especially for a usually well-composed European woman, and she slid the window in the back of the cabin open, so they could have a conversation in a decent tone of voice.

“Brad, Keymaker told us the chambers and hallways often change location and course,” Marith told him, nearly out of breath by that realization. They could be down there a long time.

“I know,” Brad answered, one step ahead of them.

“Try to think about the Perpetual Arrow and then the Sunshine,” Jonathan advised redundantly. Somehow he could form full sentences without panting.

Marith jerked her head in his direction again. “You sound different…”

“I feel different,” he shared elated.

“Your face…”

He touched the skin on his cheeks, forehead and skull, lifting his arms with ease. “My face feels… kinda good,” he said surprised.

“Because it looks good,” Marith responded with a deep frown and wild eyes. “It did not look like that before,” she assured him, flabbergasted.

Jonathan was still laying down, used to the fact that he was wounded and might die and couldn’t move to prevent more blood loss.

“Can I?” Marith asked, fumbling with his shredded track suit.

Jonathan nodded his perfectly undamaged head.

She unzipped what was left of his black, camouflage jacket and lifted the torn grey shirt underneath. The gaping wounds were gone. He hadn’t just stopped bleeding, there was no trace of him being injured in the first place.

She let her fingers trace his smooth, dark skin in disbelief. There had been gaping wounds, with blood gushing out of them, at an alarming rate.

Jonathan relaxed, while Marith examined him. He realized he was still holding on to his blade for dear life. The bone scabbard was miraculously still clamped between his waistband and his lower abdomen. He shoved the knife back in and yanked the remainders of his shirt up further, baring his muscular torso completely. He frowned and then glanced at her with big eyes.

“You seem to be capable of a lot more than just stabilizing heartbeats, Duchess.” He smirked admiringly.

She nodded, still baffled. “Yeah, I guess.”

There was blood in the loading space and on the blanket and their clothing, but not on his now flawless skin. Hadn’t his left lung been perforated? Wasn’t the skin scratched off his skull? Why was his shoulder back in its socket?

“What was that about flowers?” She asked him, while Brad had resumed their trip under the lake. This had gone completely unnoticed by his cargo.

He had only half-followed what had been going on in the back of the pickup. He had been busy locating the Sunshine and Perpetual arrow, while Marith had unwittingly healed the centre of their morning.

He had figured out which route to take.

“I’m not sure,” Jonathan said, rubbing his eyes.

He had still been laying down, stretched out, but he decided to sit upright now. The tracksuit stuck to his back. Sweat and blood glued the fabric disgustingly to his skin, but he ignored it.

“I saw… like a garden?” He almost asked her. “Then it was like I got attacked in reverse. I could feel myself heal. My lung and my skin and my face got better from the inside out.”

Marith stared at him in disbelief.

“I didn’t mean to do that. I mean, I am happy it happened, but I didn’t do it on purpose.” She shook her head, baffled.

“I was briefly in another world, as if I was watching a movie?” He asked again. “Just a really fast one… maybe it was more like a slide show of pictures.” He shook his head to himself, trying to clear his mind, equally confused.

Marith nodded, because she understood Jonathan couldn’t explain it any further.

Brad braked, which is when they both realized that the car had been moving. She pinched Jonathan’s arm, before she nimbly jumped out of the back of the pickup with the large, round keyring.

“Brad!” Marith raised her voice, since the Corridors had difficulty carrying any sound.

“What?” He asked through the opened window.

“Which one?”

She had found herself in front of one of the many ceiling high, vault doors in the underground maze, with key-filled hands and no clue which one could give access to the chamber behind it.

“Shit!”

She lapped back to the truck and shoved it in his hands. To her own surprise she felt pretty light, as if she had become more sporty. It must be the adrenaline resulting from the strain they were under or the endorphins from helping Jonathan, she thought.

“I don’t know which one!” He almost screamed from the driver’s seat of the car, fumbling with the keys on the ring. Except for the key that gave them access to the Corridors all of them had more or less the same shape and size.

“Brad, listen to me,” she said, putting a hand over his.

He stopped rabidly fumbling with the keys and looked at her, highly frustrated.

“What usually happens when you locate something? Something that is not alive.”

“Eh.” He frowned and thought about it for a second.

“What exactly happens? Do you see the object clearly in your mind? Does it stand out?” Marith pushed, holding herself back from slapping the side of the car with impatience.

“Eh, usually the first, lately sometimes both.”

“Okay, that’s great!”

Marith didn’t hesitate and yanked the keys from his hands.

“Hey!”

She tossed it behind her on the cold, greenish-grey floor.

“What the fuck, Marith?!”

“Is this the potion room?”

“No, the weapon storage.”

“Close your eyes and imagine the key to the armoury.”

He stared at her with fury and frustration, before realizing it was certainly worth a try if it would book results. He clenched the steering wheel and closed his eyes.

“Breathe,” Marith coached, not sure if that would be too much. “Imagine the key being turned and the lock responding, imagine the door opening and me entering.”

Jonathan hung drowsily over the side of the back of the car to witness the magic. All three breathing little clouds of condense in the chilly underground air.

Marith heard something behind her. A slight shift, a little tinkle. She soon felt a tap on her right shoulder and when she looked at Jonathan he was pointing and intensely looking at the ground in front of him.

“Hold that thought!” He encouraged Brad.

Marith turned around and stared at the keyring. It seemed to have reorganized itself. One key was now pointing at the door of the chamber, like a hunting dog gazing intently at prey, and the others had taken the opposite side of the ring, pointing at the truck.

“It’s working!”

She jumped after the bundle and grasped it off the floor while bolting from their side, back to the door.

“Really?” She heard Brad utter exasperated in the distance, while she impatiently waited for the door to unlock and slide towards her, so that she could push it out of her way.

She hurried through the opening the door allowed. She hadn’t bothered to slide it all the way to the right. She manoeuvred past the displaying cabinets and after yanking the Perpetual bow and its arrow off the back wall she spurted back.

“Leave it!” Brad and Jonathan yelled in unison as she dutifully attempted to close the sliding door again. That was a job for Keymaker.

She leaped into the back of the truck, holding the weapon, more agile than she would have ever thought to be capable of. She immediately handed them to Jonathan. They were of no value in her hands.

Brad continued their trip. The lights of the truck shone down some eerie hallways the vehicle would never fit through.

As it turned out the potion-room had moved down a narrow passage, that Marith apparently had to enter. Jonathan stood next to the truck and shone a massive lantern he had found on the backseat in her direction.

They repeated the same trick with the keys in front of the chamber that stored the Sunshine, only much faster.

She heard tatters of a conversation going on behind her, while opening the potion room and swiping the Sunshine. They were undoubtedly discussing his magical recovery.

When she returned, carefully carrying the bottle that housed the restless, glittering rays of blinding light, Jonathan took a seat behind Brad in the cabin, with the bow and arrow. Marith took a seat next to Brad with the bottle in her lap.

Brad sped them through the wide hallway that led them to the platform on the other end of the maze. The brightness of the swirling Sunshine in the front seat made the truck look like a lighthouse on its side, pointing at where it was going.

Meanwhile in the frozen forests of the Cascade Mountains six Pupils were ploughing through the snow, with bows, arrows, clockworks and a plummeting morale.

The sunshine carried an unusual warmth for the time of year. Nature was bright and fresh and yet they couldn’t find the big, black, bleeding beast. They had scared him off, but now they didn’t know where the bat was or who he might be talking to.

Juliette, James and Anton were inspecting rocks, bark and branches for any sign of blood. They glanced up to the canopy regularly to see if any treetops had been damaged.

Vanessa hiked in between the Runners and the Prophets, staying alert, but feeling quite pointless. Her talent had no actual scouting purposes. Every time the Runners interrupted their pathfinding activities, because they noticed an unusual colour amongst their green and white world, a strangely broken branch or recently fallen tree, she found herself aimlessly pottering around.

They were currently inspecting a mossy rock with some tarlike substance on it. Vanessa closed her eyes and let her face be warmed by the sun. If she couldn’t be of service to their quest she might as well be of service to herself. Such intense light was rare this time of year.

“I bet the Birdman hadn’t anticipated this,” she mumbled.

“What was that?” James asked, sticking his head up from behind the rock.

“We have only seen the anchor in action during darkness,” Vanessa said. “When he attacked Jonathan this morning I don’t think he expected this weather the rest of the day. He doesn’t exactly thrive under these circumstances and now he’s wounded too.”

“That is true,” Anton brought in, contemplative.

“Do you predict he is easier or harder to find now?” Juliette wondered.

“I think he is easier to fight, but harder to locate,” Vanessa decided, after some thought.

Amber and Kyle had been staring at the conversation, but they had not been hearing the words that were uttered.

“Guys,” Amber said, “we need to go back to where we last saw the anchor and wait for the others.”

“Why?”

“They’ve got what we need,” Kyle informed.

A square source of light entered the end of the tunnel through the roof. The platform was being lowered for them.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Brad mumbled, not slowing down.

“This must mean Keymaker is here…” Marith gasped.

She didn’t necessarily gasp, because of that revelation. Keymaker was likely tipped off by a Pupil or an Elder about what was happening. She gasped because she was starting to become awfully aware of their speed relatively to the pillar that held the platform up.

“Brad!” She heard herself cry rather reproachful, clasping the Sunshine.

“What?”

“Slow down! We can’t get up before the platform is completely lowered anyway,” she told him.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, slowing down to a more prudent speed.

They waited until the platform had reached their level, before entering it. Brad steered the truck in a question mark around the plateau, so it would be positioned right, after landing in the garage that housed the clinic’s ambulances.

As soon as the platform clicked with the ground floor Brad started to get off. Apparently he expected the roller doors to move up as magically as the platform had descended for them.

Without warning he hit the brakes, right before the unmoving doors. Marith slapped against the dashboard and Jonathan was hurtled across the armrest in between the front seats.

“Dude!” The recently healed Runner brought out, scrambling up again.

Marith looked around and spotted who Brad had braked for. Keymaker stood on their right next to a little white box that could fit a little metal key. He gave them a wave with his free hand. Dr. Sybling and his son emerged from the fluorescent sea of ambulances.

Cecile, dressed in an off-white mantelpiece, decorated with golden buttons, strode forward on high heels with Iris and William by her side. Will had to visibly strain himself to keep up with the psychiatrist and her dog.

Marith folded her left leg underneath her and bend over Brad, so she could talk through the opened window. “Dr. Sybling, have you heard about Etienne?”

She forgot to look at Iris and stared into Cecile’s serene, almost dull face.

The psychiatrist nodded, without allowing that topic any more of their time, and went on to their driver.

She reached for his wrists. Brad pulled his sleeves back and put his underarms through the opened window.

Can you see the others, Brad? Dr. Sybling wondered.

Brad was quiet for a moment, then showed her what he saw.

They are hiking back to where the anchor was last seen. That is where they will wait for you. I trust you have successfully collected the Perpetual Arrow and the Sunshine? She asked, since Iris couldn’t look into the high vehicle.

Yes, ma’am.

Good. She let go of his wrists.

Brad gestured at William to come closer, who came hastily. He reached back, where Jonathan had now demonstratively strapped himself in.

Jonathan didn’t need many words and handed him the antique gun.

“I went by your house,” Will shared, before Brad could say anything, “but you’d left already.”

“Yeah, I know. I saw you coming, but I had to leave.”

William nodded in understanding.

“I called the Duchess, she called Brad. We were one step ahead of you, buddy,” Jonathan informed cheerful, from the backseat. He was audibly relieved he had survived everything that had come his way that morning.

Brad turned and angled the rifle in the cabin in such a way that it would fit through the opened window.

“It’s all I got to help you! Can you handle a firearm?”

William nodded quietly and took the rifle from him. Brad tossed him a modest bag of munition. This one came from the glove compartment.

There was no point in him joining the Chain for this hunt, he would never be able to keep up. William could protect Etienne to some degree if it would come to that. The last un-rebirthed Pupil of their Chain now held a firearm that in its whole existence had never been fired as often as on that day alone.

This was their best course of action. Everybody got that, without wasting time on discussion.

As soon as William, Cecile and Iris stepped back from the car Keymaker opened the shutter door in front of them. They gave each other a brief nod of the head and the truck rolled out of the garage.

Marith noticed Lisa’s battered, old, grey hatchback on the general parking lot. She knew Lisa had stayed on campus, just like Nate had stayed somewhere deep into the woods, far from where they currently were. Those Prophets were supporting Oracle and Anica, by supplying them with the visions that came in more frequently, now that the Web was getting restless, and with sizeable magnitude.

Brad looked into his mirrors one last time, before the clinic would be entirely out of sight. The doctor and the Pupil and Keymaker had left.

They sped off onto the main road towards the location Oracle had advised them to meet.

“Do you think Watchmaker will put a location through?” Marith wondered, while Brad swerved around fellow users on the road.

“No, he can’t see the Birdman any more than I can,” Brad mumbled darkly.

“Which is?” Jonathan informed hopeful.

“Not at all. The place where Juliette and James last saw him is our only starting point. The others are assembling there.”

Of course they were, Marith thought. They were carrying the Sunshine and the Perpetual Arrow. There was no way they could successfully hunt the beast without.