Nightmare’s Edge (32 page)
As he took the handle, Nathan looked back at Kelly. “I’ll see you in a minute.”
She gave him a tight-lipped smile and nodded, but said nothing.
After tucking the violin under his arm, he stepped onto the staircase, opening the umbrella as he passed through the door. Cold wind assaulted his body and knifed through his sweatshirt with moist slaps. He hustled down the stairs and to the helicopter, ducking under the blades, though they were well above his head.
He handed the umbrella to a tall, skinny man wearing fatigues, then climbed aboard. A helmeted pilot sat up front, but he stayed quiet as he jotted something on a clipboard.
Nathan snatched the IWART from his belt and tuned it to Earth Yellow. “Francesca, are you there?”
“Yes, Nathan! Oh, thank God you called. It’s the final day, and we can see another Earth in the sky. Everyone is panicking.”
“Same here. I’m in London, but I still have to take a helicopter to Buckingham Palace. We have a howling storm going on, so we’ll need some extra prayer.”
“I will pray for safety and speed, Nathan.”
“And to get us out of a jam. We’re kind of at the mercy of an assassin who plans to kill us when the job’s done.”
Francesca said nothing for a moment, then whispered, “Amber wants to speak to you.”
“Oh . . . okay.” Nathan cleared his throat and tried to calm his nerves. Whatever Amber had to say would probably rattle him again.
A quiet voice lilted from the tiny speaker. “Nathan?”
“Yes, Amber. I’m here.”
“Nathan, I heard what you said about the assassin. This healing of the cosmos might well cost the lives of several sacrificial souls. Do not fear the path of martyrdom. Greater men than you have died to save countless others. That is what heroes do.”
Nathan held down the button and paused for a few seconds before speaking. “You’re right, Amber. I don’t know what else to say, but you’re right.”
After another moment of silence, Francesca spoke again. “I will talk to you soon. Take care.”
He pulled in his lower lip for a second before continuing. “I love you, Francesca.”
This time the pause seemed interminable. Had she heard him at all? Finally, her sweet voice came through loud and clear. “I love you, too, Nathan. If I don’t see you again on one of these Earths, I’ll see you in heaven.”
Kelly climbed aboard, brushing water off her pants as she sat next to him. “Good thing this helicopter’s big,” she said as she buckled her belt. “In the rain, my eyesight is worse than ever.”
Trying to push down his emotions, Nathan switched to the Earth Blue setting. “Yeah. Good thing.”
She touched his shoulder. “You okay?”
“Not really, but I’ll be all right.” He buckled his own belt and pressed the IWART’s talk button again. “Dad, are you there?”
He waited through a few seconds of silence before trying again. “Dad? Mom? Either of you there?”
Again, silence. Nathan left the IWART on the blue channel and reclipped it. “I don’t get it. Even if they had to run to use the bushes, they’d do it one at a time. Someone should be listening.”
“I agree,” Kelly said. “It doesn’t look good.”
“Brrr!” Daryl hopped into the helicopter, sat on a bench opposite Nathan and Kelly, and quickly buckled up. She shook her hair out, slinging droplets all around. As she pulled her wet, oversized pant legs away from her skin, she nodded toward the door. “Clara’s on her way. I figured this was taking too long, so I bolted for the chopper without the umbrella.”
Soon, Clara joined them, along with Barker, who sat up front with the pilot while Clara slid onto the bench next to Daryl. The blades whipped against the wind, and the engine whine raised such a racket, Nathan could barely hear himself think.
The helicopter lifted off and immediately surged to one side. Daryl reached across the gap between the benches and took Nathan’s hand. “Not to be forward or anything,” she shouted, “but I could use a little old-fashioned comfort right now.”
Nathan patted his side of the bench. “We have more seatbelts.” He had to yell just to hear his own voice. “Wait for a lull in the turbulence and jump across.”
Rolling her eyes upward, apparently trying to sense smooth air, Daryl poised her hands over her belt. Then, in a flurry, she unlatched it, leaped to Nathan’s bench, and buckled in. She hooked her arm around his and pressed close. “My father has to stay in the airplane,” she said directly into his ear. “I don’t know what they’re going to do to him.” She paused for a moment, then added in a trembling voice, “And I don’t know what I would do without him.”
Keeping a hand on his violin, Nathan tightened his arm around Daryl’s. He kissed her on the top of her wet head and whispered, “Your father did what heroes do.”
Kelly grasped his arm from the other side and leaned her head against his shoulder. The warmth of both girls’ bodies felt good — soothing and filled with love. Knowing they depended on each other calmed him down. If he shivered or trembled, they would feel it and maybe lose their nerve. For their sake he had to be a rock and a pillow at the same time.
As he willed his muscles to relax, both girls nestled closer. He breathed a sigh of satisfaction. Even though he had to force it, they definitely felt his peace, and soon he felt it, too.
With the helicopter continuing to bounce, Clara sat on the opposite bench, clutching her belt. Other than her white knuckles, she seemed relatively calm.
“You all right?” Nathan shouted, now able to smile with ease.
She gave him a thumbs-up. Her own smile seemed calm. She always was a tough one to scare.
After several more minutes of rough riding, the helicopter descended onto a huge green lawn, but with the metal frame obscuring their view, not much else was visible. At least the rain had stopped, but the bending trees gave notice that the wind still howled outside.
Barker jumped out and opened the passenger door. “Get down,” he said over the wind. “The London police are cooperating by cordoning off the area, but I don’t know how long they’ll believe that a boy with a violin is going to save the world.”
“I’m not sure I believe it myself.” Nathan glanced at his hands but said nothing more. Carrying the violin, he jumped out into a ferocious gale. Above, the clouds had cleared, revealing again the Earth hovering in the northern sky, now at least twenty times bigger than the moon.
Kelly and Daryl leaped out and splashed to the grass beside him. Daryl pointed to the south. “Looks like the squeeze is on.”
Nathan followed Daryl’s hand. Another Earth loomed over the horizon, not quite as big, but obviously growing. “We’re on Earth Red. The other Earths are supposed to miss us.”
Barker pulled out his cell phone and opened it. “What makes you think that?”
“I watched a simulation at Interfinity Labs on Earth Yellow. It showed Blue and Yellow colliding and us skipping past them.”
“Don’t count on it,” Barker said. “The paths shift all the time. There’s plenty of dissonance going on to bring Earth Red back into a collision course.”
While Nathan helped Clara step off the helicopter, Barker punched in a few numbers and put the phone to his ear. After a few seconds, he shouted, “Any updates? . . . Good. I’ll go with the codes I have.”
“Who’s providing the data?” Nathan asked. “And why doesn’t he just give you coordinates instead of musical codes?”
“My source is an old friend of yours who refuses to provide the coordinates directly. He is suspicious of recording devices.”
Nathan pointed at himself. “An old friend of mine? Who?”
Barker kept his eyes on his phone. “Patar.”
“He’s in league with you? I can’t believe it.”
“Trust me. He’s no friend of ours.” Barker’s face turned grim. “Look, we can either talk about his morality while the worlds collide, or you can let me program this phone to get the data. But if I were you, I wouldn’t get up on a high horse about killing a few people to save a few billion others.”
Nathan jerked the blanket off the violin. He said he couldn’t believe it, but he knew it was true. Patar wanted the supplicants killed and had said so multiple times. Yet, he seemed to have softened, especially after Abodah died. He went out of his way to help Jack, didn’t he? And his manner with Amber was tender as well. Still, it made sense that he would help Barker. They both displayed a weird sort of cold heroism in wanting to save all three worlds without regard to the sacrifices they made along the way.
In a fresh blast of air, the helicopter lifted and rose into the gale. Kelly and Daryl pushed back their whipping hair, and Clara turned away from the gusts. Soon all was clear.
While Barker punched numbers into his phone, Nathan turned slowly in place. Buckingham Palace sat at the far end of the pristine lawn, and a pond bordered the grass on the opposite side. A few trees stood about, all thrashing in the cold wind.
In the distance, ropes spanned the streets, and bobbies stood guard every few yards. Hundreds of people bent over the lines, trying to catch a view of the happenings on the palace lawn, but they didn’t seem anxious to get any closer.
Above, the two Earths continued to rise from each horizon, growing larger by the second. It seemed that if they kept the same heading, they would collide at the top of the sky. Not physically, of course, or the gravitational pull would have already forced all three worlds to zoom together at breakneck speed. No, this collision would be different . . . but how?
A chill crawled across his body, the foreboding heaviness that signaled a stalker’s approach. Nathan searched the trees for Mictar. Seeing no sign of the stalker, he yanked the IWART from his belt and gestured for his three companions to come together. When they gathered, he lifted the device and showed Daryl the screen. “Check it out. Are those right?”
Holding her hair back again, she squinted at the numbers. “North, fifty-one point five zero zero; west, zero point one four six.” She looked up at him. “Yep. He deposited us right on the money.”
“So what happens now?” Nathan asked. “Am I supposed to play your codes and get Kelly to interpret?”
Barker held up his phone. “I’m almost done. I’m programming it to use the musical stream as a ringtone, so you won’t have to play it for her.”
“How have you interpreted the codes in the past?”
“We used Kelly of the Blue world. Her father has always been lax on security, so it was easy to break in and play the tunes while she slept. She talked in her sleep, so she was an excellent resource before Mictar killed her. Since then, we haven’t been able to update the coordinates.”
Nathan looked up again. The two Earths moved ever closer together. The distance separating them was now less than the diameter of either one. “Okay. Let’s get on with it.” His own words echoed hollow in his mind. This was like sitting for a test he hadn’t studied for. How could he possibly pull this off without healthy hands?
Clara pulled a notepad and pen from her purse. “I’m ready. Fire away.”
Extending the phone toward Kelly, Barker pressed a series of buttons. The speaker played a string of notes, starting with the codes from the plastic card, the musical key that had programmed her brain earlier.
She bent closer to it, but after a few seconds she shook her head. “It’s too windy,” she shouted. “I’ll have to hold it up to my ear.
Barker’s brow furrowed. After looking all around, he drew his gun and lowered the phone as if making ready to toss it underhand, but a black streak splashed against his chest, and a second struck his face.
Nathan spun. Mictar stalked toward them, one hand carrying his black violin and bow and the other poised to strike again.
Barker fired his gun — once, twice, a third time. With each bullet, Mictar halted for a moment, grimacing. Dark blood dampened one sleeve and a pant leg, and a red streak across his cheek gave evidence of a graze wound. Still, he marched on.
Now half blinded by the spreading blackness, Barker emptied his clip into the stalker’s body. Mictar doubled over and thrust out his arm, but no new bolts came out.
Collapsing to his hands and knees, Barker sputtered, “Shepherd! Take the phone. Push star seven seven seven to get the ringtone.”
Nathan ran to him and pried the phone from underneath his hand. Barker dropped to his belly, panting through his words. “Save the world, Shepherd. I . . .” He let out a long breath and said no more.
“Star seven seven seven,” Nathan said as he shoved the phone into Kelly’s hands. “I’ll try to keep Mictar away.”
While Kelly pushed the buttons and lifted the phone to her ear, Nathan stood between her and Mictar. The stalker, now on his knees, glared at him but stayed silent.
Nathan grabbed the IWART and shouted into it. “Dad! Mom! Are you there?”
A stream of static buzzed through the speaker along with a garbled voice. “I’m here, son. Your mother is at the spot and is ready to play.”
Pressing the button, Nathan shouted again, still competing with the roaring wind. “We’re waiting for new numbers. Hang on.”
“Understood. I’ll stand by for your instructions.”
Nathan switched to Earth Yellow. “Francesca! Can you hear me?” He waited, looking up at the converging planets. His mother stood on one of the spinning spheres, her twin on the other, both with violin and bow at the ready. Would anyone on those worlds ever believe that two women with violins were their only hope for survival?
He looked back at Mictar. Did he dare attack? How long before the stalker’s throwing hand was back in business? With his eyes riveted on Kelly, Mictar seemed content to wait through his rapid healing process while she interpreted the new codes.
“Nathan?” A voice spurted through the IWART’s speaker, interrupting Nathan’s thoughts. “Nathan, I’m sorry I couldn’t answer right away. Solomon is hurt. He had to fight off some local guards, and one of them shot him.”
“How bad is it?”
“I don’t know. It’s a chest wound. The bleeding’s pretty bad, but he’s conscious and talking. When the guards saw the Earths in the sky, they panicked and ran, so they won’t bother us, but we have no way to call for help.”
“We don’t have any choice,” Nathan said. “Give him the IWART. You have to play, and I’ll give him the new coordinates when we get them.”