Prisoner of Glass (16 page)

“So you’re not going to let me leave.”
 
She crossed her arms.

“Well … no.”
 
She blinked as though this were obvious.
 
“We can’t.
 
Even
we
are still still prisoners, ultimately.”

“Well,
you
can’t because you’ll die if you leave.
 
But I can.”

Sebastian shook her head.
 
“No.
 
We’re not to let anyone out.
 
That’s the deal.
 
The people who slip us the sheets of paper are absolutely clear about that.
 
That’s the price.”

“Sebastian,” Elspeth said darkly,
 
“You can’t do this to me.
 
You can’t keep me here.”

Sebastian seemed genuinely surprised by this.
 
“We just offered you eternal life.
 
Isn’t that enough?”

But abruptly, Elspeth changed the subject.
 
“The Vizier knows about this place,” she said flatly.
 
“Doesn’t he?”

That caught Sebastian off guard.
 
Fire flared in her eyes.
 
She shouted, “That old leper doesn’t know anything!”

“Then why do you keep him in a fancy cell?
 
Why does he get all the creature comforts?” Sebastian looked trapped.
 
“He’s got something on you.
 
Doesn’t he?”

Sebastian drew a knife.
 
“Look.
 
Elspeth.
 
You’re staying.
 
Don’t think for a minute that we’ve told you
everything
yet.”

Other members of the Order of the Black Dove also drew knives.
 

“You see Elspeth … you really have no choice.”

But then, to everyone’s surprise, a ruckus commenced outside.
 
They could hear scuffles, yelling.
 
Then, the roar of a crowd.
 
A man burst into the room, panting.

“What?” Sebastian demanded.
 
“What is that?”

“The prisoners … they’re here.”

“
What
?
 
Where?”

“In the Sanctuary!
 
They’re
here
here!”

Sebastian went sheet-white.
 
“How many?”

The man’s face was ashen.
 
“
All of them
.”

UNBEKNOWNST TO Elspeth, when she had descended into the Sanctuary, a small camera had activated inside of her brooch pin with the hieroglyph of the bee.
 
And with that activation, the nighttime screens, which were usually filled with film after banal film — suddenly lit up with something new.
 
The entire prison watched this happen with mild surprise.

But this surprise quickly turned to shock, and then rage as they watched Elspeth enter the Sanctuary.
 

They saw what she saw.
 
They heard what she heard.
 

The Vizier laughed in his cell, watching his machinations come to fruition.

It wasn’t long until a prison riot and then a complete revolt was in full swing.
 
The guards were overpowered.
 
And then an angry crowd bearing torches and curses descended into the tunnels.
 
The Vizier led them, carried on a pallet by very pissed off members of the Latin Kings.
 

When they poured into the Sanctuary, they were an angry mob — and they were a thousand strong.
 

Elspeth was surprised when TSA Agent Danny Trenton was the first to burst into the Sebastian’s room.
 
“Ma’am! Put the knife down!
 
Now!” Trenton shouted at Sebastian.
 
When she didn’t obey, he lunged at her.
 
With a snarl, Sebastian stuck her knife neatly in his heart.

But it was only moments before more prisoners poured into the room.
 
A few scuffles later, and Sebastian and her men were disarmed.

The Vizier arrived next, carried in like a king.
 
He reeked of the rancor of leprosy.

“Ah.
 
So this was
your
doing,” Sebastian snarled.

The Vizier laughed.
 
“My doing?
 
It was your own doing, ultimately, helped only slightly by hand.
 
As you know is my way: I do not relish accruing bad karma: such a thing crosses my purpose.
 
As such, Elspeth wears
one of your very own
infernal spying devices.
 
I merely pinned it to her.”

“Every word I told you was a lie,” Sebastian snapped to Elspeth.
 
“All that about this being a time loop — a lie!
 
This man here,” — she pointed at the body of Danny Trenton — “died for nothing.
 
And unlike Milton, he will
not
come back to life.
 
Neither will the countless others dead outside.
 
Immortality is only reserved for us, the Order of the Black Dove!
 
You still do not know the true secret, Elspeth.
 
Don’t let this man — if you can still call him a man anymore, given all that has fallen off him — don’t believe him.
 
Don’t trust him.”

“Now
that
is a lie,” the Vizier boomed.
 

“See for yourself,” Sebastian said.
 
“Behold your dead.
 
Now.
 
Tell me.
 
Are any of them returning to life?”

 
The question caught Elspeth off guard.
 
She looked at Danny’s slack expression of blood and drool, the lifeless jelly of his eyes.
 
She ran to the door: the same was true outside.
 
The dead were still dead: the wraiths or willow-o-the-wisps had not arrived to work their magic.
 

And that should not be so: in 2002, these people had all been alive.
 
If Sebastian’s story of a time loop had been true, they should all be returning to life by now.
 
So she
must
have been lying.
 
Or telling half-truths, she corrected herself.
 
That must be it.
 
Some of her story was true … but Elspeth was still missing some key component.

Impossible.

How she hated that word now.

“Okay,” Elspeth said.
 
“Okay.
 
We’re going up the elevator.
 
We’re getting out of here.
 
Now
.”
 
Sebastian laughed.
 
“And you!” Elspeth grabbed her by the back of her neck.
 
“You’re going to lower that firewall, that lava-thing.”

Sebastian shook her head.
 
“No.
 
No, I’m not.”

Elspeth looked up at David.
 
“I don’t know how it works,” he said helplessly.
 
“Nobody does, except for her.
 
And she won’t tell you.”

The Vizier nodded in agreement.
 
“It is sooth: this little scorpion will keep her teeth closed.
 
We’ve had many a chat, she and I.
 
Haven’t we?”

“Go to hell,” Sebastian sneered.

The Vizier smiled his crooked smile.
 
“You first.”
 
Then he turned his splattered gaze to Elspeth.
 
“I say to you, Elspeth Lune … the little girl who is not a little girl, every word she has told you is true.
 
That wall of fire there cannot harm you.
 
You may pass safely through.”

“You’ll burn!
 
You’ll die, with your scalding skin dripped from your cooked bones!” Sebastian howled.

“So there it is,” the Vizier said.
 
“You either believe her, or you believe me.
 
Time to answer the question, Elspeth.
 
The one I keep asking.
 
Are you serious?
 
Because the one way back to your beloved is through that wall of flame.”

Serious
.
 
Am I serious?
 
You bet your goddamn turban I’m serious.

Without a word, Elspeth left the room and walked towards the shimmering wall of lava.
 

TEN: THIRD ITERATION

AN EARTHQUAKE hit, rattling the Sanctuary as Elspeth Lune walked.

Of course, that only meant another reset in the time loop, if Sebastian had told the truth.
 
And that also meant that somewhere above, in the Glass Prison, James Card’s record no longer had a scratch … and Milton had just come back to life.
 
God, what was
that
like?
 
Dying and living and dying and living again …
 

Should she trust the Vizier?
 
Or Sebastian?
 
Hell.
 
Both seemed like bad choices.

As she approached, a blast of heat seared her vision and interrupted her reverie.
 
Before her stood an undulating curtain of lava, a very literal wall of fire.
 
Shimmering orange and black, it did a slow belly dance, pounding out heat and distortion.

She heard Cone laugh.
 
And David — David, bless his stupid, little lovesick heart — David shouted a warning.
 
But she had had enough of both of them.
 
They were small, tiny, insignificant compared to what she intended to do.

For you, Oscar, my love.
 
This is my one chance to get out of here, to find you.

Was she
serious
?
 
By hell, yes!

She inhaled deeply and held her breath — and chose.
 

She committed herself to the lava, immolating her flesh and soul.
 
The pain of flame scalded her.
 
Her nerves danced with the feeling of being singed, of being consumed.
 

Her entire soul cracked in half.
 
Oh God.
 
This is it.
 
The shock of the pain—!
 

Somewhere, somehow, she heard the Vizier laughing behind everything.

That bastard!
 
He’d lied to her.
 
She was
not
proof against fire,
not not not
.
 
She was dying right now, being consumed alive by flame.

But somehow, she pushed through the lava anyway, resisting the urge to open her mouth and inhale.
 
It was surprising that she was able to keep it shut: the panic that flooded through her should have been enough to overpower any conscious thought.
 
And the pain—!
 
It was beyond anything.
 
She could hardly believe a person could remain conscious while swamped with sensation like that …
 

And then, suddenly, she popped free with a sound like suction letting go of her.
 

Air!

Goddamn!

Blessed air!

She gulped it down.
 

By degrees, she realized she was not naked.
 
She was surprised.
 
She had expected to be.
 
She had figured her clothes would have been consumed by the lava.
 

Small little tongues of flame danced around her — they had been there even while she had been in the lava wall, fire within fire, indistinguishable from each other.

So.
 
The Vizier
had
been right: Sebastian’s tale had been truth.
 
Like her own body, these clothes were likewise unburned in 2002, and so could not be destroyed.
 
In a contest of wills between the laws of science and the laws of fate, the laws of fate won every time.
 

Unseen by Elspeth, far below in the Sanctuary, tongues of flame were popping into existence, healing the wounded and restoring the dead to life.
 
Fate had to intervene and course-correct.
 
It had just taken a little time: perhaps with the sheer volume of course-correction under way, the fire-beasts had simply been overwhelmed.

And before her was the elevator, the one that went up, up, up.
 
The one that went to the Panopticon — and then to the top of the Prison, through the North Pole and to escape from the Prison of Glass.

It occurred to her just then that this elevator had been the very one she had arrived on.
 

She tried to picture it: her tall, lanky, unmanageable body, unconscious, shoved into this very elevator by men carrying her.
 
It was kind of hilarious when she pictured it.
 
Men always found it emasculating when they found a woman difficult to move.
 

She got in.
 
She pressed ROOF and the doors started closing.
 
But the curtain of lava suddenly vanished — and a furious Sebastian Cone rushed through where it had been.
 
David chased, trying to restrain her without much luck.
 
And somewhere behind them both, she saw the mob, led by the Vizier.

But they were all too late.
 
The doors sealed shut.
 
Elspeth Lune ascended.
 

The levels flashed by with dizzying speed.
 
Elspeth sped through the Panopticon — and kept ascending.

The elevator kept going, going, going.
 
It reached the top, and halted with an unceremonious ding.

She stepped out into a small, hexagonal room at the North Pole.