Chaos (28 page)

He wished he hadn’t lost the knife. He took the archer from around his neck and popped the tiny hinge. Luc drove the tiny arrow into the membrane and ripped downward.

It was a small opening, but he managed to push his hand through. He grabbed a piece of the membrane and ripped it open. The Crossroad shrieked around him and the winds picked up, gusts flying at him. He didn’t stop until he was able to drag his whole body in.

His vision grew dark until there were only flickering
lights in the corners of his eyes. It was several minutes before he realized that the flickers of light weren’t only in his imagination. They were real. Sizzling flashes of light zipped over his head.

Immediately, Luc felt his blood grow thicker in his veins. It took tremendous effort to push to his feet and even more to draw in a breath. Up and down the tunnel the lights raced.

He trudged along, not even sure which direction he was going in.

It felt like he was making his way through quicksand, and each passing minute his limbs grew stiffer, as if he were turning into a statue.

Miranda was right.

The tunnels would kill him.

He had to find a way to turn back time, but how long did he have until the tunnel claimed him as its own?

There were so many wires—millions of them—it was impossible to tell which was the right one. His throat tightened, and for a second he thought he would cry, or scream. How would he know what to do? How had Rhys known? Rhys, who was always talking about love and unity and the importance of finding your Other. What had he said the last time Luc saw him?
The path to righteousness goes straight through the heart
.

“What does it mean?” Luc found himself shouting. “What am I supposed to do?”

Above him, the wires shifted again. From within the thick ropes of steel and copper, a new wire was revealed:
thicker than his arm, different from the rest. Instead of bright white sparks along its length, there were red ones. Almost like blood flowing through a vein.

Another wire of the same thickness and weight was severed—buried under more layers of copper.

He had to try. This was it, his last effort.

If he failed, there would be no more. He had barely enough strength left to lift his arms over his head.

Luc reached up and grabbed an end of both wires with each hand. He tugged hard on the ends until he finally got them to meet, and a scarlet fire showered down on him. The tiny embers burned his skin, but he held on. The wire pulsed under his fingers like a heartbeat.

His shirt was soaked with sweat as he struggled to keep them together. A wind began to whip through the tunnel, and it buffeted his body, making it hard to hang on to the wires.

And the wires themselves writhed in his hands, as if trying to escape from his grasp.

The acrid smell of burning flesh filled his nose as the sparks rained down on him faster now. The air around him whooshed harder and he fought to stay on his feet.

Push through the pain, that was what Coach always said. If you want it bad enough, make it happen. Luc had no idea how, but he found the strength to hold the wires, despite the agony in his muscles.

A sudden current rippled out of the wires and pulsed through him. There was no pain, only a sense of weightlessness, of being outside his own body. It wasn’t an
electric shock, it was something more powerful. It centered in his chest, where his heart thumped with each heavy beat.

Awareness of the tunnel settled around him. The wires stilled, and he continued to hold one in each hand. He could feel the sparks running across his skin,
through
his body. It was as if he were somehow a part of the tunnel.

The path to righteousness goes straight through the heart
.

Rhys’s cryptic words echoed in Luc’s head. He hadn’t understood what it meant, had thought it was just another one of Rhys’s riddles, but now it felt significant.

Not only significant, but the key. This was how Rhys had manipulated time, by giving up his own body to the force of the universe and letting the current flow through him—through his heart. Rhys had once given his own energy to alter the winds of time.

Luc closed his eyes and let go of the last bits of resistance. If he had to die to save the people he loved, he would gladly do it. In the darkness, the pulse of the tunnel grew louder, and soon his breathing and heartbeat synced to the same rhythm.

He became one with the tunnel. One with time. One with the universe.

Billions of stars shone behind his eyelids, and it was beautiful. It reminded him of Corinthe, of when they’d first met on the boat and gazed up at the stars together. In each world they had found themselves in, the stars had been the constant guiding force.

Luc focused on them now. His awareness expanded
and a new force moved through him. In the span between the beats of the universe’s pulse, a whisper emerged. With each pause, it grew louder.

The stars started to swirl in his mind, and a name surfaced in the silence.

The universe was chanting.

The entire pulse of the universe focused on one thought.

Corinthe
.

Her name became the rhythm that powered the heartbeat.

Corinthe. Corinthe. Corinthe
.

Each time her name beat inside him, the force grew stronger, as if a speeding train raced inside his head. The wires in his hands grew hot and throbbed with life. He struggled to hold on even as he started to break apart from the inside out.

The wind in the tunnels increased, picked away tiny bits of him as it rushed by. He would be torn apart one cell at a time. His grip began to slip and the wind became even stronger, howling Corinthe’s name all around him.

He couldn’t hold on any longer.

The wires slid between his fingers. He couldn’t fight anymore. He wasn’t strong enough. He had failed.

The wind ripped him free from the wires and lifted him off his feet. As he tumbled through the tunnels, he held on to only one thought.

Corinthe
.

Corinthe waited in silence just inside the doors of Mission High School. She leaned close to the windowpane and fogged it with her breath. With a finger, she wrote
No
. Then she wiped the condensation away with a fist.

It didn’t matter that she hated deaths. It didn’t matter that she liked the principal, Sylvia—as much as she liked any human, at least. The marble had shown her what she must do. She didn’t have a choice.

Tick, tick, tick
. Corinthe could hear Sylvia’s heels clicking on the linoleum. She didn’t turn around until Sylvia had rounded the corner.

“Oh, Corinthe. You startled me.” Sylvia withdrew her hand from her purse. She seemed jumpy, as if she already knew something was going to happen. Humans
were more perceptive than the Unseen Ones gave them credit for.

Corinthe stared at her silently, trying to remember how to smile. She so rarely had a reason to.

She’d been enrolled in school only a couple of days, but already the principal had taken an interest in her. Sylvia had been careful to emphasize the importance of one’s appearance when they’d met for the first time yesterday to fill out her transfer paperwork—probably because Corinthe’s hair was in a wild tangle down her back, and she was wearing ripped jeans she’d stolen from a thrift store. When Miranda disappeared for days at a time, Corinthe sometimes forgot to keep up appearances.

Sylvia told Corinthe that she’d been a principal for ten years, and that she could see potential. That she had a good eye for these things, and if Corinthe applied herself, she could become an outstanding student.

Corinthe hadn’t bothered to argue. It wouldn’t matter soon.

During Sylvia’s “Welcome to Mission High, Keep Your Nose Clean” speech, Corinthe had simply gazed at her, almost without breathing. She couldn’t let herself get attached—not to Sylvia. Not to anyone.

It would only lead to disappointment.

Corinthe shifted slightly in the doorway. “My foster mom was supposed to pick me up, but she never showed. Do you think …?” Her voice trailed off and she raised her eyes expectantly. She hated lying. Back when she
lived in Pyralis, she hadn’t even known how to lie. But this, too, was the job of an Executor.

Sylvia shuffled her stack of folders from her left arm to her right so she could check her watch. Corinthe could see indecision in the principal’s expressions. She probably had plans tonight, but Corinthe knew that Sylvia would never leave a student in the lurch.

She cared about her students too much. Corinthe felt a pulse of—what was it? Guilt?—feelings she had never known before coming here.

“Where do you live?”

Corinthe tilted her head slightly. “It won’t be a long drive.” She spoke in measured tones. She had to be careful not to give anything away.

“Come on, then,” Sylvia said with a sigh.

They left through the main doors. Sylvia walked quickly down the sidewalk, and Corinthe followed a few steps behind, trying not to notice the way the principal’s shoulders slumped with exhaustion. Not her business.

Sylvia turned left at the end of the block and continued toward the staff lot. “Here we are,” she said cheerfully. She stopped next to a small black sedan parked under a flickering streetlamp and pulled out her keys. A quick mechanical chirp echoed in the thick spring air. She threw her things into the back and slid into the driver’s seat. Corinthe quickly climbed into the passenger side.

The car growled to life and Sylvia maneuvered it onto the street. “So. Which way?” she asked.

Corinthe pointed. Sylvia eyed the girl, then turned,
zigzagging the car right onto Church, left onto Duboce, right onto Castro Street, each time in response to a silent gesture from Corinthe. The pendant hanging from her rearview mirror swayed back and forth with each turn. Corinthe glanced at it each time it swung her way. Something about it made her feel uneasy.

“It’s St. Jude,” Sylvia explained. “The patron saint of lost causes. Kind of a sad saint, when you think about it.” She half laughed. “Still, everyone could use a miracle, don’t you think?”

“Sure, I guess,” Corinthe said neutrally. She didn’t really believe in miracles—had not even known the word until coming to Humana. Fate was controlled by the Unseen Ones. Everything that happened was orchestrated and carried out exactly as planned. There were no last-minute reprieves. No changes in plan. No sudden moments of salvation.

And today, Sylvia would die.

At first, Luc thought that the silence meant he was dead.

But the ache in his muscles felt too real. There was a ringing in his ears. Then, gradually, sound began to reassert itself. Birds calling to each other. Someone laughing. Wind rippling through trees.

He slowly opened his eyes. He was staring up at a domed ceiling. He sat up with a groan, blinking. He was at the rotunda. Late-afternoon sun streamed in between the columns, speckling the ground with patterns of dark and light. When he carefully pushed to his feet, the sound of laughter filtered through the air.

Everything was perfect. The columns were standing, completely undamaged, and on the street, there was no sign that an earthquake had ever happened.

His heart stopped. Had it worked?

He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his phone. Five-thirty.

There were several missed text messages from Karen.

He read the message: once, twice, three times.

If Karen’s party was tomorrow, that meant it was Thursday night. Which meant it was the day he had first seen Corinthe.

He’d done it. He’d turned the clock back.

He was running before he realized it. Thursday. Thursday was the day of the accident—the day Corinthe caused the car to swerve, the day he extracted her from the wreckage. He had to stop her. He needed time to explain everything to Corinthe, to make her remember that they loved each other.

That they
would
love each other: it was their future and their fate.

As he ran toward the intersection of Pacific and Divisadero, darting around the people crowding the sidewalk, he tried to remember exactly when the accident had happened. His lungs burned as he forced his feet to go faster.