Divine_Scream (21 page)

He mused on how many other people had ever glimpsed into the Deeper Unseen. No such instances were recorded in his banshee’s head. Most of Banch’s memories involved normal, everyday people meeting their end, peacefully, violently, or anything in between. In every circumstance, she made the call and a tremendous ocean of light flooded their way. All they had to do was take a step into it. Nobody, outside of those in the fortress, had ever refused that light. Banch and the light were too much to resist. He understood now why she’d rather him go there than stay to be the Assembly’s plaything for eternity. He loved her even more for trying to spare him that, and with her past recollections he realized Banch could easily end up back there, under their order for trying to save him. Then she would never have a way out. She’d need to perform her morbid duty until the end of time.

An awful taste flooded Jared’s mouth. Suddenly he felt bad for resting so long. His legs shaking and his tail bone on fire, he stood with the substantial detergent box, the plastic handle eating into his palm. He thought about the Kangjuns and hoped they were doing okay. He knew they were alive but hoped those blood drenched monsters hadn’t made a lasting wound in their minds.

Jared grinded his teeth, feeling responsible yet again. He tried to push all the guilt far from his mind. Then push all the deaths a banshee had to endure out too. He could switch it off, but the rub was not being close to Banch. Going through her emotions and scattered memories was almost as intoxicating as spending time with her. Shutting it out made him feel cold.

When
the
corridor shadow came into sight, he couldn’t help himself and started running. The slanting bloody splash leading to the fortress sat just left of a Chevron gas station, along the wall, near an air compressor. Jared ripped the cardboard band and pulled it around the detergent box. He opened the lid and took a smell of the white and blue crystal powder. It made him smile, the thought he would be cleaning the fortress of its filth.

“For the Grim Three. I hope you burn and all the prisoners escape.” He carried the box to the shadow and lost no time overturning it there. Everything dumped out and disappeared inside. After a couple minutes all that persisted was a sweet, chalky cloud as a reminder. Feeling slightly victorious, he dropped the empty box with an immense sigh and took a step back.

Footsteps fell in a normal rhythm on the sidewalk behind him.

* * *

Jared cautiously searched around, looking down different alleyways. After a few minutes he hadn’t found anyone but the sound of falling footsteps grew louder. He began thinking he might have imagined the whole thing, or maybe it was some sort of weird echo effect from pouring the detergent into the corridor shadow. Everything was still moving at a snail’s pace, so it couldn’t have been somebody walking nearby. It had to be Banch. But how had she recovered so quickly?

Then a person appeared before Jared, only a few feet away.

And it wasn’t Banch.

It took a moment to recognize the teenager. He wasn’t dressed in a Varsity football T-shirt and jean shorts and his hair wasn’t buzzed. The guy hadn’t aged a day since Jared last set eyes on him, but he now wore more mature attire: a powder blue polo shirt, brown slacks, and loafers. His hair was styled. The world had not resumed its normal speed and yet this person, whose name still escaped Jared, moved through time just like he and Banch did.

Jared pointed at him, too dumbfounded to ask a question. “You… we went to high school together.”

A small smile.

“I can’t remember your name.”

“My name doesn’t matter, Jared. What I am does, however,” he said.

“How do you—wait—”

The teen held up his hand. “My kind normally don’t reveal ourselves, but in this case I couldn’t just subtly dabble in your life. There is often a misconception. You see, our silence isn’t particularly not using words or making sounds, but rather that our identities are silent from all known worlds.”

“How did you get here?”

“Strange that you and I always meet when you’ve chosen to do something foolish, or I daresay brave, for someone like you anyway. But, alas, this time the stakes are a bit higher than missing the school bus.”

Jared blinked as the memory returned more fully. Yes. The day he’d met Kaitlin. “You’re that kid who wanted my nudie magazine.”

The teen snorted. “I only wanted to distract you, and set you on a different path. You had to meet Kaitlin that day. At least, in this reality. Oh, and by the way, that wasn’t your magazine, Jared. That was truth in
all
realities.”

“Tell me what you want with me.”

“While my Assembly keeps the dimensions separate by physical application, that separation is
not
enough. Events within dimensions should never flow in similar directions. We cannot afford intersections to occur. My work is done in quiet secrecy. I’m in everyone’s life. I’m the person you hardly recall, but never truly forget.”

“Didn’t you become an engineer after a car wreck… or something?”

“To some,” said the teen. “To others I’ve been ruling the Deeper Unseen.”

Slowly, Jared swallowed and his heart trembled. “You… you’re one of the Silent Kings, aren’t you?”

The teen nodded. “But I cannot remain silent at this stage, not with what you’ve just done. My intervention here must be loud.”

“Why now?”

His pale pink lips twisted. “You should have studied the corridor shadow routes better before you went dumping hazardous dimensional compounds down them. The banshee had a better grasp of the routes and what you’ve gained from her through the Divine Scream wasn’t enough to truly recognize all the potential paths. You’ve screwed up here, Jared. Royally.”

“That route went right into the fortress,” said Jared, his panic rising. “I saw it clearly! The inner chamber where the Grim Three live.”

“Do you know,” the Silent King said, stepping forward with a casual kick of his loafers, “that your chosen route branches off in three directions? And that the force of airflow is greater through one route than the other two.”

“So what? They all end up in the same place!”

“No!” the Silent King shouted and pushed a hard finger into Jared’s chest, making him stumble back. “One route goes straight through the inner chamber, with more force, and spills into the fissure where the Assembly performs their essential duties. It’s called a
dimensional hinge
and the greatest chemical reaction will spread from there, not in the inner chamber.”

Jared swallowed. He knew enough about the instability of the hinges to know this wasn’t going to be good. “What will happen?”

The Silent King’s blonde eyebrows lifted in amazement. “Such a fool… you’ve just instigated the largest disturbance paradigm
ever known
. And despite the banshee’s decelerating of time, the disturbance has already started to evolve and spread.”

“I—”

“Oh shut up, Jared Kare. You do know I have to spoil your playtime now? I must sever the remaining effects of the banshee’s Chronos Scream. The chances for the dimensions to survive this paradigm will greatly improve if I intervene in this way. The destruction suffered while time drags on would be far greater. It would end
everything
. I’ve only dropped in to tell you this so you stop messing with things of which you have no understanding!”

Jared lowered his head. It wasn’t fair. His plan should have worked. How could he have overlooked that corridor’s destination?
Because your insight into Banch’s memories is limited.
Yes, the Divine Scream hadn’t given him every significant detail, even though he thought it had.

“So the fortress… will it still catch fire?”

The Silent King folded his arms and shrugged. “The paradigm will shift everything around. Some places will catch fire, and some places will explode, but not just the fortress.” He pursed his lips in thought. “I’ve got my fingers crossed the Free Zone goes up in flames. That would be nice to see those jackasses scramble for a change.”

“No! It can’t! The Free Zone is too far. Isn’t it?”

“Not with what you’ve done, Jared. Everywhere and every soul will suffer for your actions.” With an agile turn of heel, the teenager started off. He lifted his hand and made a cutting motion in the air.

The next moment cars sped past, birds fired suddenly through the air like bullets, and people walked on unhindered. Time had resumed to its normal progression and the world became incredibly noisy all at once. The Chronos Scream’s effects were over.

Jared stood there, too numb to form a coherent thought. The ground trembled underfoot. It was building, like a massive train rocketed underground through the soil, set for exploding through the upper crust.

“How can I fix this?” he yelled. “Please, you have to tell me!”

The teen gave him a pinched, disgusted look that seethed with impatience. “The Disturbance Paradigm is ready to take hold. I cannot give advice, but my Assembly has awakened now as well. This normally means a whole lot of running the hell away, for most wise people.”

Jared broke off down the street, his feet flying beneath him.

The Silent King shouted through his hands, “See you in the fortress, my friend!
Soon
!”

We had to push ourselves up. We had to reach our feet. Stand. That was foolish of us to risk the banshee’s touch. She was stronger than we could ever know. We had to remember she believed she had more to lose than we did—such false conviction make a soul’s fire burn higher and fiercer, and unexpected strength therein follows. But we’d known that! And should have remembered! We must have been blinded by the Gift being so close. It was impossible to help our elation sometimes—every hundred years seems to feel longer, each gift seems sweeter but less sustaining, and all the while, holding the dimensions apart becomes crueler, more painful and insane.

Writhing around in the alley, in the debris, we attempted to regain ourselves. Something strange had occurred, as though we’d held our breath for a long time and were now finally allowed to breathe.

Time has been played with.

For a few minutes we picked free metallic splinters from our bodies, but only those that pained us to move. The other shards would remain until we had more time to remove them. The Eighth had femoral bleeding from a collection under his thigh and the Second had a particularly nasty, lengthy shiv pushed through his jaw to the back of his ear. We all shuddered as he pulled it out.

A corridor shadow widened on the wall of a building. That would only occur if a being from the Deeper Unseen had the correct route, which was coveted by someone of great power. That knowledge made us shrink back. The shadow spread across the building, darkening a banner of obscene blue-white-orange graffiti painted along the bricks and then rippled across rusted iron bars covering an old dirty window. The auburn depths of the shadow cascaded to the ground and a rotting wooden palette that had rested against the wall fell momentarily inside the shadow before a loafer kicked it back out into the alley. A figure emerged.

“Yula’deem,” we greeted, as the light clarified his features. We hadn’t expected to see this Silent King. We hadn’t seen any of them outside the fortress in around four hundred years, but that was a short time considering the familiar fire in his young eyes.

“Enter,” he bade.

Some of us limped forward, while others braced against a dumpster for a moment before moving, but we obeyed.

We always did.

There wasn’t a choice.

He was a vital organ for us…

All the Kings were. And one didn’t argue with the demands of his liver or pancreas. You allowed them do their work and keep you alive. You trusted them with everything you had. That was how the Silent Kings were. We loved them, but knew, oh we completely understood to our marrow, what they were and what we meant to them. There was no shortage of true nothingness to define their indifference for us, and yet we hoped they’d love us anyway, just like our Gift had hoped his parents would love him. It was silly, but it was an unstoppable need.

We filed into the corridor and staggered out onto the fibrous, opalescent firmament. The fibers flexed underfoot, the artificial wind flowed on, and silver-gold-rust particles surged down the hall, which to an outsider might have been as alien as a god’s esophagus. Only halfway to a junction, the Silent King stopped us.

“We are distressed.”

“Why, our King?” we said, all of our heads bowing in shame.

“You’ve stocked too much interest into this Gift. He’s only one in so many.”

“One?” We gasped. “But he is ours.”

The Silent King nodded. “Indeed.”

“It’s time. We want our gift so much, our King.”

“You will have your gift—when have you not?” he nearly growled.

“You are a gracious, loving, cherishing, uplifting, beautiful, kind, tolerant, and worthy King.”

We meant it.

Every word.

Every.

Word.

The scent of sharp electrified steel bit into our nostrils. We stumbled back. Linen. Soap. White resolve. Blue crystal death. It went up in the air, everywhere. To the top of the ceiling, to the lowest crevice of the floor. The fire. The flesh. Then the rendering of fat.

“What has occurred here?” we asked.

“A massive undoing,” the King answered.

We already sensed that. The Silent Kings would not reveal themselves for a lesser cause. “How large is the Disturbance Paradigm, our King?”

“Four times the size of the unhinging of 1734,” he whispered.

“
Four
times?” Our voices flared in the sliding darkness and dust.

“You will need to see to the hinges and help the effort to restore the separation.”

“At once,” we replied, and followed out of the corridor into another. We walked on, heads buzzing with the same question: what did this mean for our gift? Would we lose him? That couldn’t happen. That shouldn’t be
allowed
to happen. “Was this the banshee’s doing again? How did this paradigm conceive?”