40

The same moment Marith left the dense part of the eternal tapestry of the Universe behind, Kyle and Amber woke up in unison, which made sense, since they had also dreamt in unison.

Shapeless, shuddering sacks of jumbled organs had been hanging from ceilings in houses all over the tri-lake area.

In the bleeding heart of the Kid’s madness the locals that hadn’t drowned underwent the most incredulous metamorphosis of their lives. In the spacious houses of the more affluent neighbourhoods of the tri-lake area the women, that hadn’t been called to the lake, fell to their Persian rug covered parquet floors with a wet thud and curled into a leaking, spasming and cramping mess that would transform them into the tools Samuel needed.

An unknown force had pushed Kyle and Amber down the stairs of their respective homes to come look at it. They knew this was caused by the black magic that three freaks of nature had brought into this segment of the Web. They felt that in their core.

The Prophets found themselves in their living rooms and looked down at the puddles of goo laying at their feet. Then they looked up. Their heads were involuntarily yanked upwards, to take in the atrocity of their rotting mothers.

In a way they were hatching, stuck in slimy wetness.

When the time was right, after they had lost any semblance to a human being and instead looked like a shapeless sack of goo, they fell to the floors of their homes and crawled out.

Kyle and Amber had been nailed to the floor, forced to witness the people that gave birth to them flop around in their own bodily fluids – and other unidentified substances – before making a messy exit through the nearest window, leaving a slimy trail behind, not entirely unlike snails did.

Their fat, wet bodies blubbered through the forests, leaving gullies in the snow, filled with green snot and reddish goo. Their meat chafed and was ripped off their bones, as they stumbled and crawled onward.

When they reached the asphalt they merged as one throbbing, sticky mess, and continued their way to the Spectre Lake High School.

Horrible screams numbed the eardrums of Kyle and Amber and peeled the enamel off their teeth, before they woke up bathing in sweat.

Jonathan found himself in the Bellevue building that morning, hauling several bags of birdseed to Lucille’s apartment. In his left pocket he carried a little black box that contained a mother of pearl broche he had bought at one of the stands on the market the night of the meteor party. He couldn’t wait to give it to her.

That night now seemed ages ago. Marith had been Rebirthed during the meteor shower, while he himself had still been living in the dark. His life had made a one-eighty after his birthday party, but he wasn’t sure if he minded this turn of events. There hadn’t been a day since his Rebirth he had longed for his old life. The people he had surrounded himself with at college now seemed small-minded and focused on all the wrongs things in life. He probably wouldn’t know how to talk to his former teammates if he were to walk into any of them today.

The green door to Lucille’s apartment stood ajar. The kind of enemies the Pupils and the Elders were fighting weren’t kept out by doors or locks anyway.

“Thank you dear. You can leave them in the hallway,” Lucille’s voice, brittle with age, sounded from the kitchen.

Jonathan dropped the bags on the faded carpet and stepped into the living area without taking his vest off. He knew the windows stayed open, almost day and night, and the apartment would be about as cold as the mountains.

He was welcomed by a flock of chirping birds in the Christmas tree. It wasn’t really decorated, except by half-eaten strands of peanuts and fat balls in little nets. Decorating with glass balls and glittery bows wouldn’t have made sense with the kind of pets that Lucille kept.

A male blackbird sat on the back of one of the chairs at the kitchen table. The bird stared at him intently, before letting out a loud screech that didn’t sound at all like the way a regular blackbird was supposed to sound.

“Merry Christmas to you too, little buddy,” he mumbled.

Lucille came in with a serving tray filled with stacks of pancakes, bowls filled with forest fruits and whipped cream and a little jar of maple syrup balancing on the plateau of her stroller.

“Merry Christmas, grandma,” Jonathan said.

He took the serving tray from her, placed it on the table and pulled her chair back, so she could take a seat.

“Blessed Holidays,” she answered, giving him a kiss on the cheek, before sitting down.

“I’ve got something for you.”

“For me?” Lucille sounded exited in the way old people often were delighted by anything their grandchildren did for them.

He handed her the carefully wrapped gift. He dove into the stack of pancakes, before Lucille even had a chance to say a prayer. Maybe that was the only thing he disliked about his new life, always being hungry.

Lucille unwrapped the box with trembling fingers and opened it.

“Oh, Jon,” she said, her voice cut off by a sob.

She put it on her pink cable sweater, with a weak smile and watering eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Jonathan asked, his mouth filled with berries, cream and pancake.

“It’s just so beautiful,” Lucille said, almost whispering. “It matches my earrings,” she added.

“Then what’s going on?”

“I have a message for you.”

“Can I finish breakfast first?” Jonathan wondered, a bit surprised.

“I’m afraid you can only finish what’s on your plate.”

Jonathan fought the urge to quickly grab four more pancakes.

More birds came in through the opened windows and sat on the windowsills, some hopped onto the furniture inside. Bigger birds. They looked angrier and more dangerous than the others. Jonathan had never really educated himself on the topic of ornithology, but he was fairly sure those were birds of prey.

The jovial sounds the birds in the tree had made stopped quite abruptly.

“Is… Is that an eagle?” Jonathan had stopped chewing and stared at the massive hunk of bird, his cheeks still filled with food. His throat had temporarily forgot how to swallow.

Another one landed behind it, in one of the giant pine trees outside of the building.

“Remember, Jonathan, the battle that is upon you isn’t about politics, or race or gender, or who is vaccinated and who is not. It’s about your essence, your spirit, your being. It’s about your vicinity to the Well. Don’t let Samuel divide this planet any further,” she went on. “The world will need all of you today.”

“Nooo,” Jonathan started incredulously. “Seriously? This shit is going down today? Today today?”

“This blackbird came from the Clock.” Lucille gestured at the bird, that was now helping itself to the bowl of fruit.

She then did something she had never done with Jonathan before. With surprising agility and speed she grabbed his wrist over the table and connected to him in the way only the children of Oracle and Watchmaker could.

Lucille informed Jonathan of the unspeakable.

“I-I need to run to Nate,” Jonathan concluded after she had piled a bunch of quite incoherent, but shocking information onto him.

He managed to wash his food away with a gulp of hot tea.

“Shit,” Jonathan started to shake his head. “I don’t know where he is and I don’t have a Prophet to send me off.”

“You will be guided.” Lucille gestured at the eagles and the other angry birds that sat there, waiting for him.

Jonathan nodded and stood up, while finishing the tea. As soon as he was on his feet the birds flew off.

“Be careful today, dear,” Lucille said.

“Please call Pavan,” Jonathan said, taking her phone from the charger and handing it to her. “I don’t want you to be alone today.”

“I will,” she promised, taking the phone with a weak smile.

She suddenly looked and sounded her actual age, whatever that may have been. She seemed frail and vulnerable, sitting alone at the table, wearing her new jewellery, her food untouched.

Before her great-great-grandson jumped off her balcony to follow her messengers he hugged her and told her he loved her. Which was something he hadn’t done since he was a little boy.

Kyle sped downstairs in his pyjama’s, the soft fabric sticking to his chest and shoulders, his phone unlocked, ready to call Vanessa, or Juliette. The house was quiet, too quiet. Wasn’t his mother supposed to be cooking already? She usually was on Christmay day.

There also was no smell of freshly baked cookies or any sort of pie still in the oven. His stomach turned. Instead a horrid stench entered his nose, welcoming him downstairs. It appeared to be getting stronger towards the living room, so he crossed the ice cold hallway and opened the door to the living.

“Juliette! Jesus Christ!” Kyle screamed. A part of him had wanted to jump back and run up the stairs, another part of him wanted to know what was going on.

The Runner sat in the middle of the wide, dark leather couch, looking at what seemed to be an otherworldly fluid, with meaty chunks in it, that had been dumped in the middle of the living room with a collection of crushed, splintered pieces of wood, which used to be a cherry wood coffee table.

“Jesus Christ has nothing to do with this, I’m afraid,” Juliette spoke soft, calmly inspecting the ceiling.

Kyle followed her gaze. As soon as the strands of snot hanging from the ceiling hit his retina’s he knew his nightmares had finally become a reality.

“What kind of course has exploded here?” Juliette asked, unfamiliar with this specific dish.

“This has to prove we’re living in some sort of simulation,” Kyle muttered to himself, rubbing his face and pulling his hair in disbelief.

“Where’s Charlotte?” Juliette asked.

“Haven’t spoken to her yet. Probably still in bed,” Kyle answered, now hugging himself.

The living room was freezing cold. The window was broken. The trail of shimmering slime told them why and how it had been broken.

“Where’s your clockwork?” Juliette wondered.

“On my nightstand. I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet.”

He stumbled over to the couch and took a seat next to her. Without making eye-contact Juliette offered him her wrist. He bore his fingers into her soft skin. He exchanged last night’s nightmare, which was basically information about the future that the Web had shared with him.

Juliette sighed. She seemed a little jarred by it all. So was Kyle.

They both wondered why they weren’t more emotional about this happening. Was it because this turn of events had almost literally been predicted to them by the diaries? Or was it because there was no more emotional space left for fear or grief after everything that had surpassed this in the previous months?

Their minds had been the battlefield of an ancient war for most of their lives. They couldn’t allow themselves to shut down over this cosmic horror, not now. They needed to pretend that all the other supernatural disasters that had preceded this moment had just prepared their still developing minds to cope with this and handle it with a flair of competence.

“Go get dressed,” Juliette urged. “I will clean this up.”

“Why do you look like that?” Kyle asked.

“Like what?” She wondered, still being pulled towards the grossness in front of them. A lump of goo, that had been left behind by Kyle’s mother, had just unstuck itself from the ceiling and landed in the puddle in the middle of what was left over of the table, making a disgusting splash. It was the kind of horror she couldn’t take her eyes off.

“Your hair is… nice and so are your clothes,” Kyle said, hesitating.

She was usually wearing a tracksuit and some quick braids. Today she was wearing regular pants and some sort of blouse and a scarf. Loose curls framed her face. If Kyle wasn’t mistaken there was even some mascara on her eyelashes. He was not sure if he was being complimenting or offensive.

“I was supposed to have a thing at the homeless centre,” Juliette said, “to celebrate Christmas,” she added as an afterthought.

“You should go,” Kyle said, “and inform Vanessa, I mean. I will clean this up, before Charlotte sees.”

“Okay,” Juliette agreed, peeling her eyes off the mess, still somewhat stunned. That sounded like the best course of action.

Anton, Alexander, Joshua, Pedro, An, Meriyem, Theresa and James had basically been staying in Pedro’s family house non-stop for the past few weeks. The house contained four Runners, two Mages and two Prophets. It didn’t take long for the messages to spread amongst them. They knew what they had to do as soon as the visions from Oracle came in and the Runners were notified by means of their clockworks.

Seven Pupils had started to make their way to the village immediately after getting dressed. The eighth Pupil had already left in a flash. His Prophet wasn’t in the house, but she lived in Sweet Lake, which meant she knew more.

Amber went through more or less the same motions as Kyle on the other side of town, except it had been James waiting for her outside of her bedroom door. He was unsure whether or not she slept naked at all and he didn’t want to risk it. Besides, he had heard her wake up when he had approached the house, before he had let himself in, so he knew she was about to enter the hallway in a heartbeat.

Their routine had been in motion before any the Prophets had even waken up. The Runners had been tipped off by Watchmaker, who had been ordered by Oracle. Anica had whispered vivid visions to a befuddled blackbird that was swiftly dropped above Sweet Lake to find his way to an Elder Mage.

Lieke looked up from the kitchen appliance she was holding, whipping some cream for the pavlova that she had insisted on making for desert. She hadn’t been sure if whipped cream required honey, sugar or artificial sweetener to make it edible, so she had added all three.

A beige, fluffy flash had sped past the corner of her eye, too big for a bird, too small to be a marmot of any sorts. She flipped the switch on the kitchen machine and put it down to open the glass doors for Olive, who was dragging the leash behind her through the snow.

Why was the dog alone? Why was she out of breath?

Lieke hurriedly put on a coat of Nick’s, that had been placed over the back of one of the kitchen chairs, and a pair of the most hideous brown moonboots she had ever seen. They belonged to Marith.

She stepped outside, since the dog refused to come in.

Marith felt time collapse. She had never known humans were able to sense the fourth dimension evaporating in such an active manner. It was as if the fabric of reality was peeled away from her in the same way the skin of a piece of fruit could be peeled away from the edible part of the plant.

Her plane of existence was tilting. Then her soul, her essence, was suddenly and brutally yanked into a familiar vortex. She found herself being pulled through a tunnel. This was nothing like the colourful disco she travelled through on her way to the Clock in the Sky or the Inbetween, but maybe that was because she was travelling towards nothing this time.

The experience was intriguing and terrifying at the same time, but that was only because she didn’t really know what was about to come. The absurdity of nothing was waiting for her at the end of this non-inspiring journey and imagining nothing was not something humans were good at.

What could the absence of all things, including time and space, be like?

Soon she was embraced by the hysterical void Samuel had claimed he knew so well. It was content to be filled up again and to be put to use, but that was all there was to it. The Empty experienced the slightest sliver of relief about her arrival and then… nothing.

Hostile hollowness and an infinite blackness accompanied her down there, or up there, in the Empty. She didn’t really seem to be able to navigate properly, which had a lot to do with her lack of a body in general and, more specifically, a lack of gravity.

A sensation as if her soul was floating in black ink, swallowed by an ocean of dysphoria, washed over her, or what was left of her. Nothing physical could enter the Empty. It was just her, her core, her soul, her mind, her spirit or whatever concept people believed in.

Marith felt like she was going to implode and explode at the same time. The darkness was blinding and the silence was deafening. She felt it. Everywhere. Hopeless. Hollow. Endless. Alone. There was nothing to stimulate any of her senses. Not even the extra ones. She was left to her own devices and for the first time in her existence she experienced what it was like to be entirely alone with her own thoughts.

“Gene! Vanessa!” Nick welcomed the couple into his home.

Gene took off his coat and handed it to Nick. Vanessa felt obliged to do the same, even though she wasn’t sure she wanted to take it off just yet.

While Gene and Nick wished each other Happy Holidays and made a little small talk Vanessa took a few steps into the entrée of the mansion. She looked at the towering Christmas tree in the middle of the giant, round space. It was beautifully decorated, with the finest ornaments from all over the world. The little lights twinkled deceivingly. A bunch of Christmas presents that looked like props were placed under the tree.

She circled the tree, while Nick hung the coats in the cloakroom. Gene followed him. They were talking about college football when they disappeared into the hidden space under the staircase.

The heels of Vanessa’s boots made hollow sounds on the marble floor. Crossing her arms she inspected the ornaments. Tiny, shiny, glittering versions of The Big Ben, the Space Needle, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and many other attractions from all over the world hung peacefully from the branches of the massive pine tree. A blue-eyed Russian Matryoshka doll stared back at her.

Vanessa shivered. Something strange was going on. It all looked beautiful, like in a dream, but the atmosphere… was dead. The tree was dead, but not just that. The house was dead. There was no life in it. The air was stale and quiet, too quiet.

“Do you guys smell that?” She wondered.

Familiar, pleasant smells of cinnamon, pine tree and holly seemed to be mixed with a waft of something… rotting?

“Not really,” Gene answered, wondering what she was referring to.

“Lieke is cooking,” Nick said, briefly sticking his head out from under the stairs.

Vanessa frowned. “Where are Marith and Lieke?”

“Ehm, Lieke is in the kitchen and Marith is walking Olive.”

The Mage shook her head. No they weren’t. Goosebumps ran over her arms, her hands and feet turned cold. Something was off.

A sudden and nasty draft disturbed some of the bows and most of the ornaments. The door to the cloakroom was closed shut with a loud bang, locking Gene and Nick inside.

A silver angel spun around its axis and showed a yellow-eyed lizard person staring back at her. Vanessa froze in utter horror. The first thing that crossed her mind was the conspiracy theories about lizard people controlling the government that Kyle liked to yammer on about.

Then her brain took notice of the perfect facial structure, the silver hair and, most notably, the blue skin of the nymph.

The tall woman was standing there, a few metres behind her. Just standing there, like an apparition from another world. It looked Vanessa straight in the eyes, using the surface of the angel as a mirror.

They both heard dull thuds coming from inside the cloakroom. Gene and Nick were stuck there.

Vanessa didn’t know what to do. Neither her nor the nymph moved. She realized that, just as with the Kid, she was only seeing her, because she wanted to be seen. Was it taunting her? What could she do? She was sure that when she spun around the creature would be gone.

She didn’t want to close her eyes either. The tingling in her back told her that if she lost sight of the thing it would be standing right next to her when she would open her eyes again. At the sight of the nymph she knew very sure that she didn’t want it anywhere near her.

It was when she tried to catch the yellow-eyed monster in one of her invisible bubbles that the barking from Olive started.

That same moment Nick decided to throw his weight in and came tumbling into the hallway with the doorknob in his hands. Gene was right behind him.

They had never heard her bark like that. It was a deep growling bark, as if it came from a much bigger dog. Olive sounded as if she was fighting for her live, or someone’s life, at least.

Gene frowned, but Nick and Vanessa didn’t hesitate. Vanessa sped past Nick, moving so fast the disturbance of the air she caused ruffled the branches of the pine tree and made the coats in the cloakroom twist and turn around their hangers.

The nymph was naturally gone.

Her boots flew over the marble of the hallway and entered the parquet of the first living room within the blink of an eye. Before they landed on the black and white tiles of the kitchen she had felt it, even before looking at the dog dangling in the air.

She was still alive, but was hanging in her collar, struggling. Her head was stuck, her ears were folded over her little head, her windpipe closed. Vanessa jumped on the kitchen table in one smooth movement, grabbed the dog to take the pressure off her little neck and untangled the leash from the chandelier.

“What the fuck?!” Nick exclaimed, behind her. He offered Vanessa a helping hand, that she didn’t need, to get off the table.

“Where are the girls?” Gene asked exasperated.

“I just told you. Marith went on a walk with Olive and Lieke was just here,” Nick explained, with much sudden uncertainty behind his voice. “So I don’t know,” he concluded, looking around the kitchen with wild eyes.

Vanessa stared through the massive glass panes into the shady forest and felt there was no time to lose, only bodies to find. In a reflex she got her clockwork from a pocket in her dress and flipped it open. She felt a disturbance in the Web around her as Gene and Nick both took a step towards her and the impossible horological instrument in her hand.

At first she didn’t register the colours, sounds and movements with her eyes and ears. She had sensed the activity of the mechanics deep down in her body, in her being. It had become a part of her, just like her fellow Pupils had become a part of each other.

And now one Pupil had been taken from the Chain.

The machine started blaring like an air horn.

She knew that when that alarm came the whole Chain received it. That was always a unanimous message.

She knew she couldn’t stay there and act just as flabbergasted as Nick and Gene about the proceedings of their day. She had to leave, now.

“What does all of it mean?!” Gene screamed over the incredible noise, staring at the clouds, wheels and trundles that were put to work by Watchmaker.

“That I have to go,” Vanessa answered brusquely.

She snapped the pocket watch shut and shoved it back into her dress. She stomped back to the coatroom to fetch her winters coat. Luckily there was no nymph in sight, but she knew at least one of them had been there, with her, in the same space, breathing the same air.

Before Gene or Nick could follow her she was back in the kitchen, pulling up the zipper to her chin. The alarm had stopped harassing their eardrums. The message had been loud and clear.

Nick stared at her with big eyes. He had always known Vanessa, and also Brad and Marith and their friends from town, had been part of something else, something supernatural, operating parallel to his own reality. But now that he got to see it with his own eyes he started to understand the realness, the gravity of it.

Marith and Lieke were gone, but how gone? Were they as gone as Nate?

He shivered, tore his eyes away from Vanessa and looked around. He walked to the closed sliding doors to let the Mage out.

“My coat is gone,” Nick remarked.

“It think Lieke has it,” Vanessa answered.

“What? How do you…?”

“Listen closely,” Vanessa spoke earnestly, “the two of you need to stick together, until this day is over. Also… Olive has seen some stuff today. You need to take her with you. You might need her.”

“What will you be doing?” Gene asked, sort of already knowing the answer.

“I will look for Marith,” she said, looking from one thunderstruck man to the other.

She stepped outside, without waiting for any of them to counter her.

“Nick?”

“Yes?” Nick straightened his back as if Vanessa was a drill sergeant and they were embarking on a military mission.

“Bring guns and ammo.”

“Sure, but Vanessa… who are we fighting?!” Nick asked an empty backyard.

She had taken off, without worrying about coming up with an excuse or a lie this time. This could have been the single most freeing thing she had done in the past few months.

The heavy fabric of her dress slapped around her legs as the sped up the mountain, jumping from rock to rock and from boulders to tree trunks, until she had found the path that Marith and Olive must have taken.

She internally cursed at her choice of shoes for the day. Why did she have to wear boots with heals that day? For what? Christmas? She should have known there would be no peaceful holiday eason for any of the Pupils.

She stopped for a second to allow her lungs to collect themselves. The ice cold air was cutting through her windpipe. The sensation of a cheese rasp in her chest ran past her alveoli. If she wouldn’t stop she would be coughing up blood soon.

She steadied herself on the narrow path she was on and closed her eyes. Weren’t their talents supposed to be merging since the Ritual? She wished some of Brads aptitudes would come her way.

Vanessa breathed in heavily through her nose, trying to ignore all the implications of what was happening trotting through her mind.

Some glittery clouds appeared behind her eyelids. Usually she would just see the background noise of the Web, but the longer she focused on it the more it appeared to be clamour that turned into uproar.

She was steering her mind towards Marith, wherever she was, with all her might. How did Brad do this? It seemed to come more natural to him.

The energy of the Web continued to swell until it didn’t anymore. The sea of turmoil came to a halt. It felt as if a rippling piece of fabric was pulled tightly into a smooth, blank canvas. Every sensation stopped. If any information had been headed her way it was running in the opposite direction now.

That could only mean so many things. Actually, it could only mean one thing, she had come to learn.

She opened her eyes and stared straight into a pair of fading blue ones.

There he was, all the furtiveness and stealth were out the door, apparently. If she had still been running she would have definitely ran past him, but she knew she would have never noticed him in the first place if he hadn’t had the intention to be noticed.

“What have you done?” She hissed, without a hint of warmth or hope behind her voice.

“Why so fiery, princess? She’s over there.” He vaguely gestured behind him, after a little pause. “Uphill, taking a little nap, under a tree.” Samuel smirked smugly, while taking her reaction in. “You might be able to save her, if you’re fast… but I highly doubt it.” He cackled like the evil he was spreading.

His pale, milky eyes shot to a place behind Vanessa. Far behind her. He was receiving stimuli that almost no other creature could receive over such a distance.

Vanessa realised that nobody, apart from Brad, would ever find her or Marith again in those mountains.

“Did you get that too?” He asked her teasingly, knowing that the answer was ‘no’.

Vanessa looked up at him again and clenched her jaws.

“It seems as if some fun is happening down in the village.”

Vanessa didn’t have time for his complacent little show and took off with all the strength and speed she could deploy as a Mage.

“Good luck on your rescue mission!” Samuel screamed at her as she disappeared into the forest.

It sounded like nothing more than a whisper to Vanessa.

A fraction of a millisecond later Samuel decided to take off as well, in the opposite direction. Two blurs moved away from each other with superhuman speed, one up the mountain, one down.

It didn’t matter if whatever he had done to Marith was a distraction. Without Marith the Chain couldn’t take him on anyway.

The blackness piled up, like layers of fabric. The deeper into the Empty she got the darker her surroundings became. Anytime she thought the nothingness she was registering couldn’t get any “nothinger” it did.

Marith was nothing in the middle of nothing and amidst all that nothingness she craved something familiar. It could have been her pathetic excuse for a mother or some bullies from high school. She just didn’t care. As long as she wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.

She soon lost track of time, but even that was not important anymore. There was no reason to know how much time had passed if there was nothing and nowhere to go to. If there was no reason for existence whatsoever why would anyone want the time? Her thoughts and emotions were spiralling into madness when she felt something.

What was it? A pull? Was that even possible?

It felt like the tiniest of tugs, at her soul, of course, not her body. Then it was gone. It must have been her imagination.

Vanessa sped up when the sight of a bundled up navy blue, wool coat with a couple of legs sticking out from under it hit her retina’s.

In a heartbeat she was at Marith’s side. She squatted next to the body. Her head hung in an unnatural and odd angle from her neck, resting in the snow. When Vanessa saw the soulless, empty look in her protruding eyes the shock was so immediate and heavy she didn’t allow herself to feel anymore. Like most Pupils she had been able to force hindering emotions to the back of her mind, temporarily and only when necessary.

Today it was necessary.

The cause of Marith’s departure was evident. The knife was very profusely sticking out from in between her ribs on the left side of her rib cage. It looked bad, worse than anything she had ever seen, and this particular primary school teacher had seen a lot.

Strange enough, her left hand seemed to be pushed far into one of the deep pockets of the heavy coat that laid spread around her, like a petticoat would, in the old days, if a Southern belle would have fainted from the heat or sudden stress.

Marith had fallen more or less on her right side. Vanessa rolled her onto her back and tried to pull her left hand from the pocket to fold the both of them safely in Marith’s lap. The arm was stiff, but she managed. When the arm and shoulder had been bend upwards as gently as possible and her hand came into view Vanessa learned what had been so important in that pocket.

Marith had had her clockwork on her when she had died. That meant the Watchmakers were able to locate her.

There was a light on the horizon and undoubtedly it was going to be a Runner, tipped off by a Prophet, informed by Oracle, who had been instructed by one of the Watchmakers.

Vanessa told herself they were too well trained, too organized, for the system to fail at this hour, but she also knew they had to hurry anyway.

She forced the creeping sensations of grief and rage down to the deep pits of her own emptiness and decided there was only one logical path to follow, which was to get Marith off that mountain as fast as possible. She couldn’t wait up there for a Runner. The thick, grey roof of clouds that hovered over them had started to emanate snow again.

She hastily shoved the clockwork back into the pocket and closed the button, so they wouldn’t lose it. She folded Marith’s hands in her lap and lifted the body up in one fell swoop. She left the knife in the rib cage. Pulling it out seemed counter-intuitive at this point.

The Mage straightened her back and took a moment to take in their surroundings to determine the best course of action. She then thundered down the mountain like an avalanche. Maybe she did allow herself to feel some anger, loss and frustration, after all.

She carried the body with more ease than she would have imagined.

She jumped from rock to rock, ploughed through deep patches of snow and raced off the steepest slopes she had ever descended from. The trees, the snow, the greenery and whiteness around her morphed into a haze and she wondered if this is what the Runners felt like. She was aware they possessed even more strength, agility and skills, but nonetheless she felt like she was doing a very decent and remarkable job bringing Marith’s remains safely down to where she hoped other members of the Chain would be waiting for them.

The condense she was breathing froze on her face, but she ignored it. The snowflakes turned into little shards of ice, cutting through their clothing and skin like tiny papercuts. Vanessa ignored that as well and assumed Marith wasn’t in any position to sense the pain or notice the numbing cold.

Was she becoming a Runner? Could the Runners be turning into Mages? Were they all morphing? Was it the Ritual? Was it all the practice? Was it the loss? Was it the Kid forcing them to become one?

Flashing down the mountain, with no concern for slipping, falling and breaking every bone in Marith’s or her own body, she noticed how the tiniest of lights prickled through the thick forest. They could have been fireflies, but Vanessa knew that they were not.

The scenic surroundings of the mansion came into view. The decorated house looked like something from a Christmas movie, about wealthy people. Like Home Alone, except in this movie Kevins family would be considered poor.

Vanessa heard Nick, Gene and Olive pottering around in the thick forest around the mansion, looking for Lieke. She sped past them unnoticed.

There was something else there, in the trees around them. It could have been a deer or a bird or maybe Olive had freed herself from Gene and Nick’s incompetence and now came looking for her.

Before she could register what it was a dark blue blur with curls came to a halt about ten metres before her.

“Jesus Christ! Juliette!” Vanessa screamed, barely being able to brake in time.

The Mages almost bumped into the Runner. Juliette grabbed Vanessa by the shoulders to stabilize her. This area was steep and rocky. Sure, the many trees would stop their tumbling at some point, but the damage would already be done in that case.

“You’re not the first one to greet me this way this morning,” Juliette spoke absentmindedly, her eyes intently on Marith’s body in Vanessa’s arms.

“Give her to me,” she almost whispered.

They had brief eye-contact, before Vanessa slipped the lifeless body into Juliette’s much stronger arms. Juliette would always be the fastest one. This way Vanessa could run to the hospital in Juliette’s wake without anything holding her back.

“This was a Hail Mary attempt. Low… even for that scumbag,” Brad grumbled.

“That much is clear,” Jonathan answered, his eyes fixed on the grey asphalt.

“It must have weakened him a great deal,” Brad said.

“We can only hope.”

Nate sat quietly in the passenger’s seat of his own truck. Jonathan was driving and talking to Brad on speaker phone.

By the time Jonathan had reached the cabin where Nate was staying the alarms, built into their clockworks, had gone off. That moment Jonathan had known it wasn’t just about the prophetic dreams of Kyle and Amber and the missing mothers of the tri-lake area anymore.

The Prophet swallowed. “C-can you…” Nate sighed, his voice trembled. “Can you see?”

Brad knew what he was hinting at and didn’t let him finish. “It’s lifeless…”

“Yeah, we knew that,” Jonathan said.

He gritting his teeth. He didn’t like having to use the brakes on drives like these. He slowed down to let oncoming traffic crawl by. As soon as the car passed he stomped on the gas pedal again and sped past the mini-van, that seemed to be powered by snails, in front of them.

“But where is she now?”

“They stopped moving. She’s already in the clinic,” Brad assured them. “I see other faces… definitely dr. Sybling, Vanessa, Juliette. Others are joining.”

The truck swerved. Jonathan steered brusquely around another car, going a perfect 70 mph. The vehicle disappeared in their rear view mirror in a matter of seconds.

Nate’s head was almost slapped against the window, even though he was constantly bracing himself with Jonathan behind the wheel.

“Dude, this isn’t Monaco,” Nate muttered, a weak attempt at getting Jonathan to slow down. Deep in his heart he didn’t want the Runner to slow down. He was actually willing to risk an accident over getting to the clinic faster.

“I bet this is what Lisa was talking about,” Brad mumbled.

“What? When?” Nate demanded.

“Oh, we had this meeting a little while back about Marith. You guys weren’t there.”

Jonathan clenched the steering wheel and rolled his eyes and not just because other road-users were in his way.

“Obviously,” Nate spoke grimly. “Why?”

“Because Lisa had been having weird dreams about her, I guess,” Brad answered, a lot less power behind his voice than a few moments ago.

Jonathan was cringing inside and judging by Brad’s tone he was as well.

Clearly nobody had thought to bring Nate up to speed.

“What were the dreams about then?” Nate asked tense.

“You know how Marith can be somewhat emotional at times?”

“No,” Nate lied.

“Well, Lisa dreamed as such,” Brad said, completely ignoring his answer, “but couldn’t see clearly, indicating that Samuel was somehow involved… and then she died.” The last words came out slowly and pained.

“This has nothing, I repeat, nothing to do with her temper!”

“Bro,” Brad tried to calm him down, “don’t shoot the messenger. I know it is not her fault.” Brad now knew why Jonathan, and everyone else, had refrained from sharing Lisa’s prophecies.

“This is the Kid. This is his thing. He’s dividing us. Let’s not let him get away with it. Okay?” Jonathan tried to ease the situation.

“Yeah,” was all Nate could bring out, staring through the windshield, fuming.

They were quiet the remainder of the drive.