41

“She is currently without a heartbeat,” dr. Sybling shared, taking the stethoscope from the Mage’s chest.

She hung it over her shoulders and looked at Vanessa.

“She’s dead?!” The Mage asked incredulous.

“No, just without a heartbeat,” dr. Sybling answered flatly.

“What? How?” Several other Pupils demanded to know in unison.

“Then what on Earth is she doing?” Joshua wondered.

“She is doing nothing on Earth,” dr. Sybling sounded equally agitated as helpless. “I am afraid she is trapped in the Empty.”

More members of the Chain trickled into the private room on the psych ward. The Pupils that were present fell silent.

Vanessa had been stroking Marith’s forehead with the feather that Oracle had given her and blown air at her, just like she had done with Gene before.

“It only works on humans, dear, not on Pupils,” dr. Sybling informed Vanessa, while more Pupils shuffled around the room to make place for each other.

“Then we are going to need Nate,” Vanessa concluded.

“His third eye is going to be blind in Sweet Lake!” Lisa said, exasperated. She had just barged in. Will stood behind her and peered worriedly over her shoulder at the Mage in the bed.

“So be it! We need Marith!” Vanessa had never been this loud or scared before in her life. She tried to compose herself. “Without the complete Chain we don’t stand a chance against this monster anyway.”

“Can’t we bring Marith out of Sweet Lake and then meet with Nate?” Lisa wanted to know.

“No, you absolutely cannot,” the doctor said sternly. “Remember how all of you were drawn towards Sweet Lake to join the Chain? In this town the odds are in her favour.”

“Especially when we get the Watchmakers,” Kyle’s eyes glistened.

“Sybil is on it,” Cecile smiled a faint smile of encouragement, but her lips were pressed together in a worried line. “The Watchmakers are doing their part. We can only wait for Nate and Jonathan now, to make the Chain complete.”

The group was standing around lamely, watching the girl that could sense heartbeats lying there without one. Some took off their scarves and coats and gloves, others dragged some chairs from the hallway inside.

Somewhere in a dimension far far away that was, paradoxically enough, also pretty close to Sweet Lake the Sun had just set, introducing a few hours of darkness. The clear starry night that started to take shape above the mountain peaks, crowned by an orange line, would be followed by a majestic sunrise soon, but right now that was neither here nor there.

Circular openings in the immaculate white floor revealed the inner workings of the Clock in the Sky. Watchmaker had brought a toolbox from his office, situated in the tip of the minute hand of the ginormous floating timepiece, and sat cross-legged by one of the openings in the centre of the round room.

While his mentor was screwing and hammering on the insides of their headquarters Etienne sat patiently and expectantly by his side, watching his every move, learning with unparalleled speed how the job was done.

“Have you found her yet?” Oracle asked, tearing her gaze away from the dark blue heavens.

“I do sense a presence,” Watchmaker answered with a nod.

He had stopped adjusting the gears and trundles before him and peered into the inner workings of the Web.

“What do we do now?” Anica wondered.

She stood behind the seated Watchmakers with her hands behind her back. She had learned a while ago that trying to understand the mechanics behind the different fabrics of reality wasn’t her forte or her destiny. She trusted in the expertise of the old man and the young boy.

“We touch,” Etienne told her, gesturing her to sit down beside them.

“We need to channel Nate specifically,” Oracle instructed, gliding towards them.

“Can we send her a message?” Anica asked.

“What would you like to say?” Oracle wondered, with slight surprise.

“That…” Anica closed her eyes, trying to find a way to put the inexplicable into words. “That Marith is not alone, that she is the ‘imaginer’ of the Empty, meaning it isn’t completely empty. She needs to see the possibilities.”

“Everything and nothing are, in fact, one, because they are interlocked,” Watchmaker informed. “We are living in the best, most incredible, version of nothingness,” he shared with a burdened sigh.

“Let’s set our intention on showing Marith that,” Oracle agreed.

Existential dread and explosions of mania were trying to crush Marith’s soul into something that had to be smaller than a quark.

Marith knew that if - and that was a big if - she was ever saved from this place she would have to live with this experience until the day she would actually die, and maybe even after that.

Despite the tsunami’s of hopelessness and feelings of not wanting to exist anymore and then realizing she couldn’t even kill herself to get away from this hellhole if she wanted to, she knew, in the core of her being, that she had to stay sane somehow.

She had already played all six of Bach’s cello suites and most of Vivaldi’s thirteen cello concertos in her mind, probably several times.

She wanted to remember Schubert’s Arpeggione sonata’s so bad, but after the twenty-first bar of the first sonata her mind kept going blank.

The shattering realisation that she might be suffering from memory loss hit her like a hurricane. She started to cry, even though she didn’t have tear ducts to produce the tears in or a face for the tears to roll off.

If not even music could keep her in the present and away from serious derangement then what could?

Marith noticed a bundle of energy that couldn’t help but stand out in the desolate field of nothingness she had found herself floating in. This piqued her interest.

Why was there suddenly something, rather than nothing?

Could it be the music revealing itself to her?

What was the potential relevance of this?

Did her emotions carry this energy in?

After what seemed like an eternity, but could have easily been just a matter of seconds, Marith felt a pull. Something vaguely familiar was floating around her. Searching.

And amidst all that nothingness there were two objects. Looking for each other. It was reaching out to her. She desperately wanted to reach back, but what did she have? How could she reach? She consisted of nothing.

She panicked. She didn’t want to be surrounded by nothing forever. She wanted the floater.

She tried to focus on her senses. She couldn’t see, she couldn’t hear, she couldn’t taste. But she could remember and if she could remember she could think and that must mean she could feel. She tried to focus on her emotions and on the presence around her. There was definitely floating something in the distance. It was some sort of beacon or light.

The reality of the Empty had to be, somehow, interdependent on her consciousness. Could her own consciousness lure somebody else in? Despite the properties of nothingness that this place held? Her mind still allowed a sense of being. What if her mind also allowed another being?

She wanted it so bad. She craved contact. She was desperately seeking a connection. Maybe it had just been her imagination, but what was there to imagine if there was nothing around her? The Empty was empty. Was she really going crazy? This fast? Was it fast? How long had she been amongst nothing? Long?

Time.

What was time even for? To measure… What? She was really pushing her brain to painful levels of exertion now.

To measure what?!

To keep track of nature… where she came from!

The sun. The moon. Planets. Planets? Earth!

A fainting sensation came over her, as if her mind was severely out of breath. She lost consciousness, which was oddly comforting. The Empty clearly wasn’t built for her. She couldn’t focus in there. Thinking felt like wading through a river of molasses.

She took a bodiless nap.

Nate ran through the halls of the clinic like a Stormtrooper, with Jonathan in his wake. He didn’t need to be told which ward, which hallway or which room she was in. The situation called for heightened awareness and when Prophets were stressed important information just came to them.

As soon as he burst into the crowded room where Marith laid out like a deceased president he yanked off his hat, coat and gloves and tossed them at no one in particular. They never hit the floor, so he knew someone had caught his them.

“Welcome to the great distraction circus,” Kyle mumbled from a corner of the room.

He was immediately shushed to silence by Lisa and Amber, even though he was right. Kyle wanted to go see his sister so bad, but he knew that if he would go to the high school alone that would be the last thing he ever did.

Nate had brief eye-contact with dr. Sybling, before he took a seat by Marith’s side, next to her on the bed. His right hand grabbed her left wrist and his left hand locked into her right wrist.

He closed his eyes and dove right in.

Marith was being brusquely awakened from her nap.

Despite the under-stimulating environment her essence was existing in she figured she must have been provoked by something. Something had triggered her lower consciousness.

Then it was back again. The floater. In the far distance she could feel it pulling again.

She needed something to think of. A feeling or an emotion that would draw the floater towards her. Her thoughts had to be powerful. So much was clear to her now.

She thought of Earth again. An orb from a past life. No. Not a past life. Earth was from a past existence. She was still in the same life, she guessed.

She thought of that floating rock she came from. It was made of… earth… and water… skies and… trees? Trees. She loved trees. Nature’s lungs. Was that were this had all begun?

Hadn’t she been born amongst a sea of trees?

There seemed to be nothing before the trees and nothing after the trees, but there had to be something before the trees. She had just established time. Her mind was getting dangerously exhausted again.

Mist. Her mind was filled with it, but before the trees there had been mist too.

The floater went right past her. At great speed too, she noticed surprised. If she still would have been in possession of a body her hair would have slapped her face.

The strange intruder appeared to be travelling in an elliptical pattern around her, narrowing in on her.

Great speed. Of course there had been something before the trees. A train!

Memories came seeping back to her. She saw snippets of the strange train accident on another piece of the Earth, on another continent, her return to the town with the water that didn’t glisten anymore, the faces of some people that were probably important, but she couldn’t recall why.

She was pulled away from the faces by a mass circling around her in the same way electrons would behave around the protons and neutrons of an atom.

The floater. It was like it sensed her too, but it couldn’t pinpoint her exact location yet. Maybe she was moving too? Without being aware of it?

Marith reminded herself that nothing was just a concept. Nothingness required consciousness to exist and therefor complete nothingness wasn’t allowed by the wiring of the human mind.

The Empty possessed the minimum possible energy that quantum properties could have, but it did possess energy. There was no other explanation that allowed its existence.

Why did these thoughts just cross her mind? Nothing was really random in the Empty and yet these sensations felt random, as if she hadn’t come up with them herself.

She suddenly remembered how she was hanging inside a drop of rain, dangling from a leaf, in the tree of the Multiverse.

She needed something more. An emotion that would put the spotlight on her presence.

Nothing wasn’t the opposite of being. It was the nothingness that allowed her to be. So it could allow someone else, if she wanted it to.

She forced everything and nothing to be one in her mind. She just had to coordinate this thing. It was nothingness that allowed space and time, she just had to lure it in.

One of the faces came back to her, suddenly and out of the black. She felt the most powerful thing she had ever felt. A random word came into her consciousness.

Nate.

She was feeling her way through the darkness, guided by his pulse, his presence.

Marith felt the person that had changed her life and realized they were connected by nothing, because nothing was the blank backdrop on which their world, the Inbetween, was painted.

The Empty was the backdrop of everything, everything that she had ever seen, or wanted, in life.

This was how Marith’s second Rebirth began. She felt everything and she needed to feel everything to survive. Her life came crashing down on her. Returning to matter made Marith a victim of physics. She returned to the carbon-based lifeform she once was and that was no walk in the park or, in her case, no stroll around the lake.

She came back screaming into a world that was so bright she didn’t dare to open her eyes. The Web was hugging her so tight she felt like she was in a straight-jacket. It was a beautiful pain.

She returned to the vibrating dimension that contained the soup of particles she was once born in and that she would one day seize to exist in.

Her face was wet and so was the clothing she woke up in.

Nate’s face hovered in front of hers in this world as well. It was kissing her. She cried harder, until she didn’t find the strength or any reason to cry anymore.

She wanted to sit up, but couldn’t. He shoulders refused to bring her arms to perk herself up. She sunk back into the bed, feeling Nate’s body sitting next to her, which was comforting.

In the few seconds she lost consciousness again all three of Schubert’s Arpeggione sonata’s flashed by her ears. She remembered them just perfectly.

This time it was Vanessa waking her up, by softly shaking her left shoulder. Marith looked up at her.

“I am so glad you’re here,” she whispered at Vanessa.

Her voice cracked. Her mouth was dry. She was handed a glass of water with a straw.

Nate was now holding the remote control of the bed and moved it up until she was sitting more or less upright.

“So am I,” Vanessa whispered back.

“Vanessa was actually the one to find you,” Juliette informed Marith.

“Right.” Marith nodded, still not fully back to reality.

“Are you alright?” Jonathan asked. “Like fully alright?”

Marith nodded. “I do feel a little stiff,” she answered.

She noticed how she was fully aware of every detail in the Web. Every vibration, every soul, every object that was a part of this world. If anything her senses had been strengthened, not weakened, and her spirit was lifted, not lowered. She could still feel the madness from the Empty following her, trying to reach out to her, like tentacles, but mostly she felt as connected as ever.

“This is what separates you, the Pupils, from Samuel, the Kid. You refused to let the Empty contaminate you,” dr. Sybling spoke.

Marith knew that wasn’t true, but she didn’t have the spirit to discuss any of the implications of what she had learned back there.

She had to live with the knowing that everything and nothing were one. Nothingness holds more power than everything, because humans are scared of it. The Kid was the epitome of people’s fears, but the Empty was the vessel through which his evil was possible.

She had to also live with the fact that she would never be able to talk with anyone about this experience and the lingering feelings of powerlessness at accompanied it with anyone, except with the one person that she didn’t want to ever talk to again.

“What was it like?” A silky voice asked. It was Theresa’s.

“Quiet.”

Marith stared silently at the Pupils around her. She knew all the faces this time. Lastly her eyes rested on dr. Sybling, who stood at the other end of the hospital bed, looking down at her.

“I just wanted it to be over,” Marith shared, shaking her head. “I wanted contact. Any form of contact would have sufficed in there.”

It didn’t really make sense to her either. She had always been very comfortable on her own, sometimes too comfortable, but the Empty had been too much, even for her.

“You have escaped the weight of darkness. I don’t know many people who would be able to carry it like you do,” dr. Sybling said and smiled her ethereal smile at her.

“Thank you so much,” Marith muttered at no one in particular.

“It was a joint effort,” Nate explained.

She was still holding hands with Nate. His eyes never left her red face.

“Okay, I hope this is not too soon, but what exactly has just happened?” Joshua wondered.

“The body never goes to the Empty, because then it wouldn’t be empty. The body never goes to any other part of the Web, whether it be the Otherside, the Inbetween or the Empty,” dr. Sybling explained, looking at the last six Pupils to join the Chain. They hadn’t had the talk with Pavan or the tour through the Corridors by Keymaker.

Dr. Sybling went on to explain about the knife that Marith had been stabbed with and told them the history of the Slavic Armsmaker, who made the weapons that the Runners still carry around.

Marith realized how happy and relieved she was to have everyone together in one room. It felt safe to be around everyone she knew. She took a few more sips from her water, while a heavy silence hung in the room.

Wait, everyone? She frowned. Amongst the sea of faces she was missing about three and also a tiny one with lots of hair and a very long tongue.

“Where are Nick and Lieke?” She wondered, trying to look past a collection of torso’s, hoping they were in the hallway.

Her gut clenched. Where were they? They should be here too, right?

“They don’t know…” Vanessa’s voice died away.

“We all felt you disappear, like you went off the grid somehow, just like when Vanessa was attacked, but we didn’t know where to this time. You just went completely off the radar,” Brad started rambling.

Vanessa put a hand on his arm and went on to explain what had happened after she and Gene had arrived at the mansion earlier that day. She left nothing out, including her encounter with one of the nymphs.

She told Marith how she had found Olive hanging from the chandelier, how Lieke had gone missing and how she had ordered Nick and Gene to go look for her.

“Can you localize Lieke and Nick?” Marith asked Brad. She left out Gene, since she still had difficulty thinking or talking about her father.

“Yeah, ehm,” Brad hesitated, not sure how much he was supposed to tell a patient that just came back from the semi-death. He decided to start with the sort of good news. “Gene and Nick and the dog are now travelling around by car,” he said. “They are listening to CCR…”

“Irrelevant,” Kyle murmured.

“Right,” Brad agreed. “They’re going towards Spectre Lake right now.”

“And my sister?”

“Lieke is at the Spectre Lake High School,” Brad muttered.

“Really?” Marith asked, massaging her own neck. “But that means the Kid isn’t there, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to see?”

Everybody fell silent. Some looked at their shoes, others at the ceiling tiles.

“He saw Lieke disappear there… and Charlotte, as well.” Kyle swallowed. Marith had never seen him look so ill-at-ease.

“So we have no way of knowing whether they are still there or not,” Lisa clarified. “We are all blind here,” she emphasized.

Marith looked to her right, at Amber, who half-sat, half-leaned on the windowsill. Those were her schoolmates too.

“Let’s go then,” Marith urged.

“Ho ho, no so fast,” Nate said, gently pushing her back into the pillow.

Her stabbing wound had healed. That is what the bodies of Pupils did.

Also the knife she had been stabbed with wasn’t a “bleeder knife”, it didn’t have to be, it was able to send people to hell.

Marith was ready to go.

“Prophets can play several scenario’s in their head, right before an occurrence, depending on the Kid intervening with their visions,” dr. Sybling informed.

“Do you mean alternate realities?” Joshua wondered.

“No, it’s all in this reality. It just hasn’t happened yet,” Meriyem said.

“We can all link to have a greater chance at seeing the truth,” Theresa suggested what everybody was already thinking.

Dr. Sybling spread her arms and linked with Amber on her left and with Theresa on her right. The other sixteen Pupils followed their lead.

The connected Chain flowed through the room like a twisted computer cord. They combined the foretelling gifts of the Prophets, the tactical insights of the Runners and the different talents of the Mages to attempt to point down where the Kid was taking Lieke and Charlotte and likely other students as well.

Brad deployed his talent first. To the others it felt as if he opened a computer tab. Actually there were several tabs. One was searching for the girls, one attempted to scan the grounds the high school was situated on and one was meant to focus on the Kid. The last one stayed blank.

I see school buses? Brad continued in their hive-mind.

I feel this already happened, Nate thought.

I agree, Theresa said, but it’s fresh.

The other Prophets confirmed that Brad was in fact receiving information about the recent past.

How did he got all those girls to go with him? Jonathan frowned, while staring worriedly into mid-air, like a Prophet getting a vision.

He was seeing what Brad was seeing and it didn’t look good.

How did he get half the town to drown themselves? Kyle muttered.

We aren’t fully human anymore, so it’s hard to fathom his influence on the human mind, dr. Sybling thought.

Marith could. Marith had lived under his influence the majority of her existence. She was done with it and so were the others.

Quite sudden the Mage was worrying if what he was seeing was real or if it was what the Kid and his nymphs wanted them to see. The others felt her unease.

Brad is seeing what we are all seeing, Kyle brought in.

When it concerns something horrible, something big, then the probability of the accuracy of anyone’s predictions gets bigger, Nate explained, his eyes closed for ultimate focus.

Marith wasn’t convinced by this, but she decided to let it rest. She knew that what they were currently attempting was as accurate as it would get.

What were his intentions with the girls he had abducted? Samuel had evaporated any social cohesion that existed in the tri lake area. He had been messing with everyone’s mental health, he had murdered the sons, brothers and fathers of the families that lived there, he had released his nymphs on the ones that had survived up until that moment… and now every young woman was under some sort of spell?

It had to be about his foothold in this dimension. He was gaining energy from those poor girls somehow. She wasn’t sure how yet, but she did know that his darkness knew no limits.

Unbeknownst to her she had started to glow.

Marith!

Yeah? Marith answered, a little agitated by the volume of Brad’s thoughts.

Do that again! Nate urged.

What?! She asked, a little annoyed by how they were mentally yelling at someone who just got back from unexisting.

Think those thoughts again, or whatever it was that you were doing! Meriyem insisted, a big frown travelled across her forehead as she prepared for incoming traffic.

For some reason the Pupils had assumed the Kid tearing the fabric of society down was a symptom of his presence, but Marith now sensed it was actually a tool.

The Kid tore the fabric of society down in order to tear the fabric of reality down, that was his thing. Marith knew that Samuel’s lies travelled faster than their Runners and that the tri-lake area was already damaged beyond repair by his doings.

She shared her frustrations with the group.

Got it! Brad almost screamed. He sounded exulted.

Yep, the Runners confirmed. They are on the move.

A burning sensation running up and down her arms made Marith open her eyes. Nate had already let go of her wrist, but she was holding Ambers underarm in a harsh grip. The Prophet stared at her with wide eyes, to polite to fight herself free.

Marith apologized and promptly let go.

“Whatever that was,” Brad started, pointing at her arms, “was fucking powerful.”

“We have to go there… like now,” Kyle said.

“Marith just woke up!” Nate exclaimed worried.

“This might be our only chance. Whatever he is doing, he is doing it to become stronger. That means he is weak now. We must end this ordeal today,” Marith told everybody in the room.

Both the Chain and dr. Sybling realized there was no arguing with that. The Mage was right.

It was getting dark outside when the Pupils left the clinic. The clouds, no doubt carrying more snow, cast a premature darkness over the day. The trees formed dark, ominous silhouettes around the hospital and the parking lot. The air was cold and hostile.

“Ground control to Watchmaker,” Vanessa mumbled to the dull atmosphere.

The vibrations the Pupils were usually able to pick up appeared to be flatlining.

“It’s as if the Web is in a coma,” Theresa agreed, looking around as if answers were going to descend from the thick cover of clouds overhead.

“It isn’t, we just need to shake it awake,” Will spoke wisely.

Lisa squeezed his hand. Her car was parked on the other side of the lot. They broke from the group and jogged towards the small, grey hatchback.

Vanessa hesitated. Juliette, Marith and herself had arrived on foot. So had the other Runners. How would they get to the girls exactly?

“Didn’t I give you Marith’s axe last time we were fighting this thing?” Jonathan asked Brad, as he strode towards the sea of snow-covered trees.

Several other Runners were already standing at the edge of the forest, waiting.

“Marith’s axe?” Joshua asked with a smirk.

“From the bumper of her car,” Jonathan refreshed his mind. “He threw it at her. I would be my honour to throw it back.”

“Yeah, you did,” Brad answered his question. “It was still in my truck when I started loading this morning. I figured somebody might still want it.”

“I don’t,” Marith grumbled, strolling by, supported by Nate.

Brad opened the flatbed of the truck. The cover had been pulled over, because of the snowfall and also to hide its contents.

“Cool, I’ll take it then,” Jonathan said.

He just held it in his right hand, like a Viking ready for battle. There was no room for tool belts in the aerodynamic outfits of the Runners. The knife he had gotten from Keymaker was nicely tucked in the waistband of his tracksuit.

“Nice, dude!” Joshua commented on Brad’s arsenal.

The Runners that had been waiting at the treeline now marched back onto the parking lot. They were always carrying their knives, but Brad had stored their bows and arrows and a whole bunch of firearms and munition.

“Can we please move with some sense of urgency?” James pressed, when the Runners started to empty the flatbed.

An and Pedro nonchalantly walked by on their way to the black van and peeked inside. Weaponry was to a Mage what sunshine was to deep sea creatures, completely useless and highly unnecessary.

Marith was hoisted into the passenger seat of Nate’s car. Nate started the engine to get the cabin warm. They waited for the Runners to pick their weapons of choice and for Brad to close the flatbed again.

“Hey Rambo, I am joining you,” Vanessa told Brad, running around the truck to claim the passenger’s seat.

She climbed into the vehicle and waited for the other Pupils to find a vehicle of their preference. The Runners had disappeared, leaving no trace behind. They trusted their instincts to guide them to the place the Kid would be spreading more emptiness at their moment of interception.

One by one the cars left the hospital’s parking lot and sped onto the main road. They ploughed through the brownish slush on the roads. Snowflakes were descending aggressively all around them, as if they had been ordered to do so by the anti-Christ himself.

Brad, knowing the exact location of the girls at the moment the Chain was linked, drove up front. His truck and the van behind him also cleared the road somewhat for Lisa’s old car to find its way through the mix of old and new snow. Nate and Marith closed the ranks.

Despite the fact that each of the cars had an experienced chauffeur the Pupils were slapped across the vehicles nonetheless. No seatbelt could prevent their organs from being relocated at these velocities.

“Hold on, guys!” Kyle yelled for the third time, since they had left the hospital grounds.

The passengers of the cumbrous black van braced themselves by grappling at the handgrips and armrests, while Kyle forced the vehicle to sail through a left turn like a ship at open sea.

Despite the fact that Meriyem’s left shoulder and temple met with the tinted window with a dull thud when Kyle attempted to correct their course after the bend her hand was trailing the insides of the van. She only found one button and that one would allow the door to slide open.

Anica – or Oracle, the vision was accompanied by a lot of white noise – tried to inform her of something.

“Kyle, do these windows open?” She asked nervously.

“No, only the windows up front,” Kyle answered, focusing on the road.

Brad was speeding up again. Anytime there were no other drivers in their way on the road to hell Brad would stomp on the gas pedal like his life depended on it. In a way it did.

“Open the windows,” Meriyem instructed.

“Pedro,” Kyle said curtly, indicating he should listen to Meriyem.

“It’s cold. You open the window,” Pedro, sitting in the passenger’s seat, retorted.

Pedro, An, Meriyem, Theresa and Amber had found themselves in the black van. Amber and Kyle were close due to the fact that they were the same age, attended the same high school and had gotten their Rebirths fairly close after each other. The other passengers belonged to the triangles that had joined the North-American Pupils later, after they had rebelled against their own Chains. This had set them apart since the beginning. Add that to the fact that they all stayed in the same house, outside of town, and they naturally pulled towards each other in situations like this.

“No, on your side!” Meriyem unlocked her seatbelt and lurched over him to smash the knob that would open the window.

The panel of glass lowered just in time. A massive bird torpedoed itself into the car. It bounced off of Meriyem, who fell backwards into the car, and back to the Mage.

Pedro sat frozen in the passenger’s seat with Lucille’s messenger befuddled in his lap. It was a barred owl. The animal looked around Pedro into the van, at the other passengers, as if to determine which one it was supposed to give its notice to.

“What’s it saying?” Kyle asked.

Pedro’s eyebrows flashed up and his eyes were about the same size as the owl’s. “How on Earth am I supposed to know?” He asked, glancing incredulously at Kyle.

Meriyem now sat on her knees, balancing herself between the two chairs. She put her hand on the head of the animal and closed her eyes. The owl closed its eyes as well while the connection was secured.

Pedro stared at her with his mouth hanging open. “What the...? Why can’t Anica just send you guys a message the regular way?”

“I think the Kid or the nymphs are jamming the signal,” Kyle said dryly, remembering how the Web was pretty lifeless around the hospital.

“It’s hurting my leg,” Pedro groaned.

The owl was indeed clutching its claws into the Mage’s left leg to stabilize itself in the speeding vehicle.

“Suck it up, buttercup.” An cracked a joke and looked very proud of it.

Amber giggled. An’s English had, by far, improved the most, since he had arrived in the states. This was mostly due to the fact that his grasp on the language had the most room for improvement to begin with.

“What do I do with it now?” Pedro wondered after Meriyem had removed her hand from their feathery visitor. He ignored the other Mage.

“Hold it tight until we leave the car. Then you can set it free. Do not toss it out of the window,” she warned him, with a threatening undertone behind her words.

Pedro awkwardly placed his hands around the folded wings, so the bird wouldn’t wobble around too much when Kyle was drifting through any bends and curves in the road. The owl relaxed its claws and turned its head 180 degrees to see where they were even going.

“What did it say?” Pedro asked, when he had gotten somewhat more comfortable with the bird of prey in his lap.

“We need to fight on another front,” Meriyem spoke darkly, crawling back to her seat and grasping at the belt.

The six Pupils were silent for a few moments of deep reflection and utter concentration. They all knew what front she was referring to. They just had to organize their thoughts accordingly.

“You might be right,” Pedro answered softly, barely audible over the disturbing sounds that came from under the hood.

“I think this is our purpose. We didn’t cross continents and oceans to fight their fight. This is why we are here,” An spoke from the back of the van, referring to the six Pupils that had joined the Chain last.

Theresa nodded. Meriyem knew he was right. An was arguably the most quiet member of the Chain, but when he had something serious to say people tended to listen.

“If this is about those wretched lizards I want in as well,” Kyle said, briefly looking at his passengers through the rear-view mirror. His eyes had narrowed into small, dark specks.

He was clutching the steering wheel so tight his knuckles were white. He tried to keep the unwieldy van on the road with all his might.

“Oh, those blue cunts are involved alright,” Meriyem said.

“Amber, you in?” Kyle asked his fellow Prophet.

“This might be the worst idea you’ve ever had,” Amber spoke, with a slight tremble behind her voice. She hesitated for a few moments, then said, “If we’re fighting those nymphs I want a weapon.”

“Yeah, your visions won’t help you there,” An said.

Amber realized it didn’t really matter whether or not she would help fight the Kid or help fight his nymphs. It was both equally dangerous and it all boiled down to the same thing.

“Let’s go then.” Kyle floored the black van to keep up with Brad.

Amber looked out the window, to her left. She saw walls of trees, ribbons of tarmac and then walls of trees again, with little yellow stars peeking through, which were mostly porchlights from the houses that were built deep in the woods.

Soon they flashed over the higher grounds the main road around Sweet Lake was constructed on and they could see the illuminated town square that James, Jonathan, Joshua, Anton, Alexander and Juliette had already passed several minutes ago. The Christmas lights were a colourful mess to the Mages and the Prophets in the cars, but they had been visible as sharp as a needle in a haystack for the Runners, even though they were travelling faster than a gulf stream airplane.

“This time tomorrow” by the Kinks was on.

This time tomorrow, where will we be?

On a spaceship somewhere, sailing across an empty sea

This time tomorrow, what will we know?

Will we still be here, watching an in-flight movie show?

I’ll leave the Sun behind me, and still watch the clouds as they sadly pass me by

Seven miles below me, I can see the world and it ain’t so big at all.

It didn’t fit the mood in the car at all and Marith turned it off. Nate sat quietly next to her, sticking to the bumper of Lisa’s car. Kyle’s mother’s van, which happened to carry the majority of the Pupils that weren’t Runners, slipped and skidded over the wet road in front of the grey hatchback. It looked as if Kyle didn’t have the van under control, but Nate and Marith knew that he did.

The night was falling early, but Marith loved the night, because in darkness anything was possible. Thick snowflakes were coming down more vigorous by the minute.

The colonne of cars had left Sweet Lake in their rear-view mirrors. The terrains between the three villages were usually wild and desolate, but they had crossed that range in the blink of an eye. They passed Spectre Lake’s road sign as well and now found themselves on the road that would lead to the road to the high school.

Bright, white streetlights illuminating their path every now and then were indicating they were getting closer to civilization. Surrounded by millions of trees, covered in sparkling snow, the only things that were disturbing the afternoon were the four roaring engines of their cars.

Marith had travelled this road often in the previous months, usually for carpooling purposes. She had never seen it so deserted. There were no other road users. Brad’s truck was the first one to disturb the virgin snow.

Marith knew that Samuel had been thinning the herd, but there were still some people alive in the area. Shouldn’t they be on the roads, on their way to Christmas celebrations? Was it possible the Web had cleared out this patch of planet Earth for the final showdown?

The Chain felt the Kid coming, like a summer storm. A sensation as if Samuel was disturbing the density of the air travelled towards the group, but the Pupils knew it was the Web coming to life again to warn them about incoming dangers.

Brad’s blue monstrosity, Kyle’s black dork-mobile, Lisa’s grey mouse and Nate’s truck came drifting around the last bend that would give them a decent view over a long patch of road.

Red break lights flashed in front of them. Nate slowed down to a more acceptable speed as well.

“We’re getting close,” Nate murmured.

Goose bumps ran over Marith’s arms, before her skin started glowing again. She knew her entire body would soon follow. It almost felt as if she was reaching her final form as a Mage. She wondered if the other Pupils felt the same things, but her throat felt too tight to ask Nate what was going on inside him.

Instead she took off her coat and was instantly reminded of being stabbed about eight hours prior to this moment. Her jersey and t-shirt were torn and stained by rusty, dried blood.

Marith’s heart started thumping, which it hadn’t done in a long time. She felt the Web constricting around her, like a woman in labour.

Brad came to a skidding halt. His ABS spurted into action. Kyle steered around the truck and stopped beside him, blocking the route completely. Lisa parked close behind them and Nate stopped as well, leaving a royal amount of space between them and the rest of the Chain.

They both witnessed how the Pupils started to leave their vehicles one by one. Their body language betrayed that they didn’t really know what to do either, besides waiting for the clash. Marith wasn’t sure whether she was hoping Samuel would show up or not. Wouldn’t it be super convenient if they had calculated the wrong course, despite their best efforts?

“Okay, apparently this is it,” Marith said, breathless, fumbling with her seatbelt.

The Runners, armed to the teeth with ancient and modern weaponry, stepped out of the greenery they were surrounded by. They had felt it too. That was reassuring.

She gave Nate a quick kiss, nothing more than a peck on the lips to which Nate locked the doors of the truck.

Marith had heard the locks slide, but tried to open her door anyway.

“Marith,” Nate spoke in a hoarse whisper, grabbing her arm.

“We need to go,” Marith answered, looking at him confused.

“Marith, listen to me,” he urged with big, worried eyes. “We have both seen you die. Right?” He asked for confirmation.

Marith nodded demurely. She had a vague feeling of where this was about to go.

“You just died and you came back.”

She nodded again. She wanted to ask Nate why there was an owl escaping from Kyle’s mother’s van, but decided not to.

“Then this was it. Right?” Marith noticed how flustered and insecure he was.

She nodded again and even added a little smile to convince him.

“If you lay down low now I might get to keep you.”

She didn’t answer. She kissed him again and hugged him.

She let her hand trail his tense right shoulder and shut her eyes. She pinched her eyelids together like a sluice that had to stay closed, otherwise a ridiculous amount of water would flood the local village.

She wanted to have a future with Nate so bad she had actually started to believe that it was possible for a few moments.

Marith really wanted to oblige, to make him happy, but she was Dutch, so she was planning on doing the opposite of what she was told.

Getting a handle on life had always been like picking up a bar of wet soap to Marith. She wasn’t good at it and she didn’t know how others did it.

She sighed. It was a charged, burdened sigh.

“Nate, I love you, but we really have to go,” she said determined and unlocked the truck by pulling the little plug in the door behind him.

She quickly climbed out of the truck. The snow crunched under her boots. She fished her scarf from the passenger's seat and made accidental eye contact with Vanessa. They exchanged a meaningful glance.

Vanessa sensed the tenor of the conversation that Marith and Nate just had. That’s why she hadn’t allowed any room for discussion that morning, when she had send Nick and Gene on a little mission of their own.

For some reason the former passengers of the van started to unload the remains of the cargo in Brads truck. Marith had a feeling Nate wanted to continue their conversation and stomped towards the weaponry to see if the antique rifle she had shot the Birdman countless times with was in there as well.

Before she could reach the truck the Web came to live with a burst of energy. Like an explosion of fireworks the yellow bus came thundering towards them, seemingly from out of nowhere, but realistically from around the other bend in the road.

“That’s not good,” Amber said from behind Brad’s truck.

She was awkwardly cradling a long gun in her arms that she was pretty sure was an AK-something. She hadn’t fired a rifle since she had been skeet shooting with her dad four years ago, but she was quite sure she still knew how to pull a trigger.

Brad had just handed her a magazine. Amber found it pretty thoughtful that he wouldn’t let her go fight for her life without ammo. She couldn’t help herself from blushing and hated herself a little for that. The Mage had just wanted to explain how to click the magazine into the firearm when he jerked around.

The yellow colossus thundered towards them with no signs of stopping.

Jonathan charged forward, spun the axe around in his hands, raised it, aimed and swung it towards the bus with the power of a small artillery cannon. He then jumped out of the way. The windshield shattered and the axe disappeared inside the bus.

This act of violence failed to slow it down. Samuel probably wasn’t even hurt. Marith just hoped he hadn’t hit any of the girls.

“Will!” Lisa screamed from behind Meriyem and Marith.

The energy in the Web around Will seemed to be moving, vibrating like hot air above a road during summertime. William seemed to suck the sparks of electricity around him into his body.

The vibrations cumulated in his outstretched hand into a tiny, shiny, glowing dot, ready to explode. Which it soon did, in every direction, except his face. The Pupils around him ducked away.

“Aim for the hood!” James screamed at the Mage from the top of his lungs.

Brad stood stand by with a big, black firearm. His eyes travelled from the Mage to the bus and back again as if he was watching a tennis match. He was ready to shoot the tires, but he didn’t want the bus to spin out of control and off the road, with the possibility of hurting the girls inside.

William shook his hands as if they were wet and he couldn’t find a towel. He then tried again. The entire Chain could feel a rush of power surge through their nervous systems.

The lightning that shot from his fingertips was the same colour blue Marith imagined their eternal battery, the Well, to be. The blue veins disappeared into the yellow nose of the bus. The instant internal damage was apparent.

The bus came to a sliding, creaking, steaming halt, about a hundred metres from where the Pupils had placed their barricades.

“Awesome!” Joshua exclaimed. “It’s like you ate lightning!”

His skin was glowing, just like Marith’s arms.

“Dude!” Brad yelled enthusiastically, lowering the semiautomatic he was carrying. “I’ve always wanted to stop a vehicle like that!”

The smoke coming from under the bonnet tainted the fresh air around them. The Runners rushed towards the stranded bus.

Marith, Meriyem thought. The Prophet had grabbed her wrist from behind. They were still standing in between the parked cars. Anica wants you to know that through the void anything is possible.

What? Why? Where is Oracle?

I don’t know, Meriyem said with a shrug, we’ve got bigger problems, right now.

Snowflakes landed on their lashes and in their hair. They ignored it. The Mages and the Prophets strode through the crunching snow towards the wreck.

They didn’t have a formation, or a game plan. All they had were their talents, their anger and some experience from fighting the Birdman and jerking around during practice sessions.

Deep in the dark maze under Sweet Lake Keymaker made his way to the atrium. Dr. Sybling followed him closely. Her footsteps were swallowed by the void, but he knew she was right there behind him.

The hardware hanging from his work-clothes made soft clinking sounds. He was carrying a tray of vials. They contained the most dangerous substance in the Corridors and because of that they were never on display in the Potionroom. They both knew about the Thunder and its consequences.

When he had picked dr. Sybling up in the garage with the ambulances she had looked at the vials with a mix of morbid curiosity and cold detachment in her eyes. Keymaker had realized that he still had to get used to the fact that she could actually see the world through her own eyes now.

He had previously prepared the Conference room for thirteen people. Pavan and Lucille and several other members of the Chain of Elders were already seated there and waiting for them.

Since the only other person that knew about the Corridors and had access to the Corridors was Brad – who was currently facing their mortal enemy like the hero that he was – Keymaker had to march from entrance to entrance to pick the Elders and dr. Sybling up. There were three entries and they were all at, more or less, opposite sides of the lake. He usually never got this kind of exercise.

When they finally arrived in the atrium and passed the ginormous bed, situated under the square opening in the bottom of the lake, Keymaker halted to catch his breath and to let Oracle’s twin sister enter the Conference room first.

“Mind your step,” he told the tall, dark psychiatrist.

Before she walked into the room she handed Keymaker something heavy and cold, with a grip carved out of wood and bone.

“From Armsmaker. For you collection,” she said.

One corner of her mouth formed a little smile, before she stepped into the room with the sloping floor. Keymaker smiled back at her and followed her, closing and locking the heavy door behind them.

When they entered the chamber they were greeted by the Elders currently present, sitting in a circle, with several unused chairs in between them.

Keymaker trotted around the nautilus shaped rails that the chairs had been assembled to and handed each Elder a vial of Thunder.

“Hello Lucille,” a familiar voice spoke next to miss Parker the moment Keymaker removed Lucille’s stroller from the circle.

She looked to her left at the young, cheerful face of the love of her life. His eyes radiated warmth and devotion in the exact way she remembered, even though she hadn’t seen him in decades.

“Hello dear,” she said with a trembling voice, reaching for his hand.

Soon she would look about the same age as him and then they would finally spend eternity together.

“Merryfield,” Pavan mumbled at the tall, distinguished man to his right.

Lucille gazed over the circle they were seated in. Marith’s ancestral Elder smiled and waved a little wave at her.

“Thank for looking out for my great-great-granddaughter, old man,” he said to Pavan.

“My pleasure,” the former headmaster answered.

Keymaker continued to pass the thirteen vials around. When the racket was empty he stepped out of their sacred circle. He placed the stand on Lucille’s stroller. She wouldn’t need it anymore after this anyway.

When the Elders were done greeting each other he folded his hands and cleared his throat. Things were about to get uncomfortable. For him at least.

“I think the substance each and every one of you are now holding,” he spoke, trying to sound official, to not disrespect the heaviness of what was about to happen, “doesn’t need a lot of explanation. So I guess I only have something personal to share.” He sighed a deep sigh, before continuing. “My son, Will, and his girl are out there tonight,” he said with a closing throat. He quickly wiped some wetness from his eyes. “I will pray for them, while knowing that your love, your light and your energy will make difference. It’s an honour to have known you and I have no way of ever paying you back for this sacrifice.”

His incoherent words wouldn’t have made sense to an outsider, but it did to dr. Sybling and the Elders. He wished they would stop staring at him now.

“I’ll toast to that,” Marith’s ancestor, that he only knew as mister Merryfield, spoke quite jovially, raising his vial.

Keymaker noticed he was nothing like the quiet, serious Mage he had met. He hoped Marith would be able to experience some of that lightness after all this was over and he hoped the same for his son and his daughter-in-law and for the ones by their sides.

“Easy for you to say, you’re already dead,” a woman with thin, white hair and glasses the size of binoculars said.

Tense laughter travelled through the room.

“I promise you, Sheryl, it’s not that bad,” one of the returning Elders, that Keymaker recognized as a member of the Pine dynasty, shared with a wink.

“This is it, I guess,” Pavan said, raising his vial as well. “It was an honour indeed.”

“See you on the other side?” Mister Parker asked his wife.

Lucille smiled at him and brought the vial to her lips with a trembling hand.

The Thunder was a pure black goo, but when the recipient was ready to swallow the substance it turned liquid. Yellow, blue and purple coloured veins flashed through the vials, indicating it was ready to be digested.

“Let’s go help our children,” dr. Sybling spoke.

Her gaze rested peacefully on each and every one of the Elders, after which she drank the black liquid in one gulp.

Before the dark and irreversible effects of the Thunder kicked in the group was able to make the necessary hand-wrist connection and finalize their Chain. They never had a Ritual like the youngsters had. Why would they have? The Kid wasn’t awake back then and they had never lived in the same area at the same time either.

As a matter of fact, this was the first time in their entire existence they were all in the same room together.

The chairs slowly moved backwards so the Prophets, Mages and Runners from the previous era could see the tapestry of their world unfold. Keymaker had taken a seat on his stool by the door. He was still emotional, but watched the proceedings in front of him with intrigue.

The greyness of the Corridors and the Conference room allowed the Elders to focus, just like green hues allowed a surgeon to concentrate on the operation at hand.

A detached feeling washed over the group, as if they had just ingested sleep medicine.

The ceiling lit up with a coding only initiates would understand. Formulas, that were written in a mathematical language that wasn’t invented yet, unfolded above them. The downloads it brought them handed the Elders all the tools they needed.

Ready? Cecile asked, knowing Sybil had now joined them as well from her position in the Clock in the Sky.

Ready! The Elders shared in unison.

A quick, but sturdy yank at their souls separated them from their earthly flesh. They were on the move.

Soon they were enveloped by complete and utter darkness and they decided to form the light, because they knew they could.

Oracle was laying on top of the sheets in the massive canopy bed, her eyes closed, her hands folded on her chest, her hair still neatly wrapped in golden clasps, her tunica twisted around her legs. She drew shallow, but steady breaths. Unfortunately there was no possibility for Anica to sit by her side and there was also no point in it either way.

The Web hadn’t been responding to the Pupils, because a part of it had been dying. Anica had known this would happen someday, and the likelihood of it happening today was also quite high, but she hadn’t expected it quite this moment. She had also hoped it would somehow been more ceremonial. From one moment to the other she was now becoming Oracle. Soon she would be the only Oracle alive.

Anica stood by one of the openings in the smooth, white flooring of the Clock in the Sky. Watchmaker and Etienne were working up quite a sweat.

“Do you feel it yet?” Watchmaker asked.

He was bended over a warning wheel, one leg in the opening, his back in an uncomfortable angle. He sounded out of breath.

Anica closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “Honestly? No,” she answered. “It could be the… ehm, circumstances though,” she said, glancing at Oracle, nervously squeezing her own hands.

What would she be worth as a successor of the most powerful Prophet in the Web if she couldn’t even function under duress?

The sun started to come up again. Anica had to narrow her eyes when golden rays of hope and new beginnings shot over the mountainsides. Oracle’s golden jewellery sparkled, almost blindingly, and continued to shine fiercely as the intensity of the sunrays increased rapidly. The immense dome they were under warmed up in a manner of minutes.

Watchmaker sighed and very suddenly and resolutely moved all his tools and equipment out of the circular space he was standing in and handed it to Etienne who quietly put everything back in the right trays of the toolbox.

“What do you think?” He asked, looking at the young boy, while straightening his back.

Etienne gazed into the opening with superhuman focus and let his eyes travel over the jammed gears, wheels and trundles before him. He then turned around and fished a hammer out of the box.

“That one,” he said, pointing at the count lever.

Watchmaker took the heavy tool from his little hands and raised it over his head. When his right arm travelled down Anica closed her eyes again. In a way she was praying.

The hammer landed on the count lever. The sound it made must have travelled through dimensions, disrupting worlds and forever changing societies.

It was also this exact moment that Oracle drew her last breath.

When Anica dared to take a glance glittering clouds appeared above the wheels and trundles in the opened floor. They were back in business.

People think that horror movies are scary, but actually this was it. Knowing deep in your psyche that at any moment humanity can shift into a dystopic reality, in which men aren’t welcome, women are turned into monsters and young girls are casually assaulted and abducted.

The trees that followed the ribbon of asphalt through the mountains formed a cathedral around the Pupils. The Chain felt like they were walking through a cavern towards a monster that had been holed up in there for ages.

William’s pulse to stop the bus had fused the streetlights. Darkness enveloped their surroundings, but luckily Rebirthed humans could see fine without light.

Marith heard the hissing sound of the electric doors of the bus opening. Samuel slowly stepped out with the grandeur of a king and stood amidst the Runners as if he was about to address the peasants of his kingdom.

While Marith’s ragged, torn outfit hung around her torso like she was an apocalypse survivor the Kid had changed his outfit to something more stylish. Maybe Marith’s blood had splattered all over the white jacket he had been wearing earlier, maybe he just wanted to blend in with the night. Marith wasn’t sure what his angle was, but if he wanted to look like a Russian oligarch he was succeeding, she thought.

The snow had stopped falling. Now they were just surrounded by a layer of virgin snow and an eerie silence.

Marith tried to see beyond the dark panels of glass in the bus. She noticed some of the girls obediently sitting in the rows of benches inside. They didn’t appear to be scared or surprised by the fact that they were being hauled around town in their underwear and pyjamas on Christmas day. She figured Samuel kept them under some sort of trance or hypnosis.

Flickering lights in the low hanging clouds above them made Marith look up. It looked like thunder, but definitely wasn’t, since the rumbling sounds that usually accompanied such weather were absent.

Transpicuous, shining orbs joined the Pupils to anchor light into the upcoming interaction.

The flickering stopped as the Elders descended from the obfuscating overcast. For some reason each and every Pupil knew who those orbs were and what they were there for.

The Chain stopped what they were doing, which wasn’t much to begin with. The Runners had mostly been restraining themselves from commencing on a lynching party.

Marith now understood why Vanessa had been talking about glowing marbles back when Marith had been forced to kill the deer and then deciding to bring it back to life again. Apparently Marith could see them too. She just hadn’t encountered any death unfolding before her opened eyes, since her Rebirth, so she hadn’t been aware of this ability.

They were bigger and brighter than Marith had imagined them to be. The souls lowered themselves until they were hanging about a metre above the Pupils. The snow reflecting their light illuminated their surroundings as if there was professional movie lighting directed at them.

“Bringing hell to Earth, I see,” Samuel said, referring to the orbs, avoiding looking directly into any of them. “Nice touch.”

The Pupils didn’t say anything. They were trying to play it off as if this unforeseen turn of events was totally planned.

The spheres of energy scattered themselves evenly in the air amongst their descendants. The Chain felt how their bond was being completed. It was as if the last wires of a computer were fused together, as if the last piece of coding had been added to the software and now the program could run at full capacity. The motherboard was now integrally operable.

A sense of security, of soundness and dependability, washed over the Pupils.

These feelings reminded Marith of things that never actually happened in her life, as of yet, such as waking up under a warm, heavy blanket next to Nate on a cold winter morning, being a baby in a womb of love and prosperity and waking up on Christmas morning and getting what she actually wished for.

The Elders had a peculiar message for them: treat this as a neutral event. You are both a designer and a player in the spectacle of the Universe.

The bond between the Pupils gained such a flow the Prophets could share their visions without touching, the talents of the Mages would soon rub off on the others, the strength of the Runners was felt throughout the group.

They could all feel the electricity in the air, which seemed to be vibrating according to the Web’s mood. It wasn’t in a good mood, but it was combative.

Their entire lives the members of the Chain had felt as if the fate of the Universe had rested on their shoulders. Today they knew the fate of the Web was in fact their responsibility. The time for a cosmic clean-up had come.

The Pupils looked each other in their third eye and knew what had to be done.