Chapter One
Ten Minutes
“I can live a normal life,”
Jordan said, and then he pulled the trigger.
Man. Husband.
Father. It didn’t matter.
It ended in a bang and the sooty
smell of gunpowder.
The bullet struck; blood
spattered across his Kevlar vest. Before
he could squeeze off another, the man grabbed his wrist and twisted his arm violently
to the left. Jordan spun around and hit him
in the side of the head with the heel of one shoe. Blood smeared red across the sole of his
sneaker.
Things became surreal; time
slowed down. The second hand on his
watch stopped.
Where
was I ten minutes earlier?
They say life can change in a
flash.
I was
talking about college?
And now… I’m committing murder.
His life went into rewind while
he stood, eyes unblinking. He heard
gunfire around him, but he felt as if he watched himself from afar.
His body engaged on autopilot.
His ears rang. Bodies dropped.
Ten minutes ago, Kolin had asked
him a question in the quiet of the woods….
“You sure that going off to college
to play hockey and study physics is the best way to go about this whole quest
of yours?” His British boyfriend’s voice had hovered above a whisper; above the
music of crickets in the glade.
Chirp
Chirp
“It’s the only way,” Jordan had replied. “Cornell’s the university that’s got
everything I need. Hockey’s my
ticket. Without it, I wouldn’t have
gotten in.”
“So you’ve said.”
Dressed in black tactical
fatigues, Kolin propped his elbows on a tree trunk almost four-feet wide that
had long ago crashed to the forest floor.
He peered through a pair of night vision binoculars. The buzz of nocturnal insects and the babble
of a brook nearby filled Jordan’s ears. He
rested his head against the moss at his back and stared at the stars.
He could no longer hear the
crickets.
But the guns got louder and
louder. The second hand on his watch
started moving again.
Dylan
can track the monsters better than anyone.
He calls them azghuls.
Jordan finally blinked, but he
didn’t see a monster. He saw a man. Blood pulsed from his neck in a thin
stream. The pistol shook in Jordan’s
hand as he realized what he’d done. With
tears clinging to his eyelashes, he came about and fired, blowing the man’s
brains out the back of his head. The filthy
corpse dropped into the mud and twitched for several minutes; the white eyes
darkened.
Six feet behind him, Robbie cried
out. The teen fell onto his back with a
loud plop. However, Rob still managed to
get off a couple of shots. Two bright
flashes and his attacker fell down, kneecaps blown and bloody.
Why
am I here?
Jordan thought, loosely holding his gun.
The stars…I was looking at the
stars.
Jordan turned his face to the
sky.
Where
are the crickets? Why is this happening?
Chirp
Chirp....
He was back at the tree.
Kolin interrupted his thoughts by
waving four fingers in front of his face.
He understood that Kolin had counted four men. No—correction. He had counted four things that used to be men. It seemed easy now to say that, more so since
he had killed one.
Kolin lowered his head to talk
with him. “Their meat’s still alive on a
chain, but that could change at any time.”
Jordan felt sick. “She’s not meat.”
Kolin gnashed his teeth. “Sorry. That was a bit parky, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“This is all new to me,” Kolin
continued. “I’ve killed two of these
things now. If you need to think of them
as beasts to bring yourself to kill them, then do it. I need you to understand that whatever bug
that’s wormed its way into their gray matter has changed them. The last one that we came across in Colorado
went specifically after you, even though Kat was closer. I’ve been thinking about that for a while
now. I think they absorb a bloke’s
memories, and your face has been on the NBC Nightly News as well as that other
show…” He put finger to chin trying to think of the name.
“Ellen?” Jordan clarified. “That’s
the name of the other show.”
Kolin stared at him in
silence. “Yes, that one…she dresses like a man.
But my point is that there’s plenty of people that know who you are.”
“There’s nothing wrong with
wearing pants,” Jordan whispered. “Lots
of women do.”
“Listen,” Kolin said, and then
paused to make certain he had Jordan’s full attention, “the last one of these
things that I killed three days ago even knew your first name. How do you explain that? You know what else he said?”
Jordan shook his head.
“‘Give us the boy who can hear
the cry of heaven.’—the fuck that
means. At first, I dismissed their
language as incoherent babble. But now I
think it’s Czech. That suggests this
isn’t random if they’re speaking the same tongue, right? The azghuls originate from a specific group
of supporters. That means the Horcus has
help. But answer me this: where are they
coming from?”
“I don’t know.”
“Exactly. And I think that’s something that we should know.” Kolin swung the binoculars from in front of
his eyes. They depended from a hinge
attached to a head harness. He placed a gloved
hand upon Jordan’s right shoulder. “You
have a gentle heart, but these aren’t men. Do you understand?”
Jordan trembled. But he remained silent.
These
aren’t men….
It bore repeating.
Jordan opened his eyes. In one blink, the present had murdered the
past.
He swung the barrel of his gun
and shot, emptying what remained in his clip from almost point blank range into
Robbie’s attacker. He blew off an ear
and a nose. Chunks of flesh sprayed
outward mixed with a few pieces of bone.
The azghul dropped with a howl, shuddered once, and died. He wore a Brooks Brothers suit.
Do
monsters wear suits?
Robbie stared at Jordan from his
prone position on the forest floor, face twisted in horror. Jordan couldn’t move; tears streamed down his
cheeks. He just stared at all the
blood. He squeezed his eyes shut.
I’ve
worn a suit. Does that make me a
monster?
Ten
minutes. My life changed in ten minutes.
Jordan sank to his knees, and
warm human blood soaked into his jeans.
Unable to take it anymore, he
screamed and covered his face with his hands.
My
life changed in ten minutes….
His thoughts fled to the serenity
of the fallen tree.
Kolin exhaled through his nose,
nostrils flaring. The muscles along his
jaw tightened. At last he pointed into
the woods. “Circle ’round to where your
sister and Robbie are and come at them once you spot me. We can’t have things turn squiffy. They’re stronger and faster than us so remember
your training. It’s their mindlessness
that’s got me lost. I think there’s something
about the people from this world which pose a difficulty for the Horcus.”
“It’s the Black Tower,” Jordan
said. “The Light’s stronger here because
the Tower’s still whole. I can feel it deep
inside me. Sometimes it hurts.”
Kolin stared at him through the
night, eyes sober. “If it’s an ache
that’s bothering you I guarantee it’s Los Angeles you’re feeling and nothing
else.” Jordan knew Kolin simply wanted to
remind him of the great time they had during the invitation-only NHL entry
draft hosted by the Los Angeles Kings.
But it had the opposite effect.
That life now seemed a fantasy…like something reserved for normal people.
Jordan had been one of two eligible
18-year-olds picked by the Chicago Blackhawks.
In the hockey meat market, competition was fierce. Being picked by the Blackhawks simply meant
that Jordan had been optioned; they had two years to sign him. In the meantime, they’d evaluate his
performance to the highest standard.
That single honor might have been
the biggest influence for his acceptance at the Ivy League school. Of course, he would never know for sure.
It also didn’t change the facts.
Jordan had told Kolin no
lie. He could not find the Black Tower
without Cornell. True, they had six
openings on their team. But they turned
down thousands of submissions each semester from people who outscored him on
the S.A.T. Literally hundreds of men
with dreams of playing NCAA division I ice hockey vied for positions on the Big
Red. Some had more experience than
Jordan. Others had better records. Jordan would need to prove himself every day,
or he wouldn’t be able to look himself in the mirror. Sometimes the stress became so great, it made
him throw up.
So far he had managed to keep it
all a secret. Even the part where Jordan
felt he would die young. Maybe one of the
monsters would kill him, maybe something else.
I
don’t want to die.
“It seems far away, doesn’t it?”
Kolin asked him.
Jordan nodded. “I have to remind
myself it happened only eight weeks ago, because I feel as if more than a year
has passed.”
“Why do the happy times always
fly by so fast?” Kolin asked.
Are
there happy times?
“You still see the Black Tower in
your dreams don’t you?” Kolin asked him.
Jordan stared forward with a blank face; he looked like a kid holding a
toy gun. He gave Kolin the briefest of
nods. “I suppose it’s possible that it’s doing something,” Kolin said.
“If by ‘possible’ you mean that
it’s definitely happening, then sure.”
“But how can you be so certain?”
Kolin asked him. “You don’t know
anything about how it works.”
“Have you heard of Occam’s razor?”
Kolin clenched his teeth. “No. And
spare me some rambling physics explanation.
I’m not in the mood.”
“It’s the idea that the simplest
solution is going to be the correct one.”
“So you think because you’re not
dead that it has to be the Black Tower that’s responsible?”
“It makes the most sense,” Jordan
said. “The Horcus is here on Earth. I know that for a fact. That I’m still alive suggests he’s either
afraid of me or is unable to find me. Answer
truthfully, would you be afraid of me?”
“No.”
“Precisely my point.”
He no longer spoke of it to Kolin,
but Jordan descended steps carved into prehistoric ice every time he closed his
eyes. The basalt walls that lay
enshrouded somewhere in the bitter wasteland of the world beckoned with
chilling whispers. The tower stood in a
place where cold forced the mercury in a thermometer to stay at that odd temperature
where Celsius and Fahrenheit became the same.
Find me, it said and Jordan
knew the fate of two worlds depended on his efforts.
Kolin pulled the black mask down
over Jordan’s face. The youth
practically disappeared into the darkness, save for the pale sheen of irises
that stared back at him. Enlarged pupils
nearly swallowed those pools of spring blue.
Jordan started off at a crawl. The weight of the silencer made the Glock he
carried top-heavy. He propelled himself
through the grass on his elbows and knees.
He kept his blade-thin body off of the undergrowth and stayed silent as
a Navy Seal would have done in ‘Operation Geronimo’ mode.
He circled around the camp. Up ahead, he saw Robbie and Kathy at their
post. His friend signaled with a free
hand. They all wore identical equipment;
Robbie removed his knitted cap once Jordan got closer….
“JORDAN!” Robbie yelled.
Jordan blinked. Gunshots echoed in the wood.
Robbie still lay on his
back. He had blood drops and pieces of
brain stuck to parts of his face. Blood
pooled around Rob’s shoes from the man Jordan had killed.
Jordan’s fingers felt sticky.
“What’s wrong with you?” Robbie sobbed. “Are you okay?”
Jordan didn’t know how to answer
that question. Am I okay?
Dylan raced into the clearing
with Kathy and said, “I dropped the last one a few hundred feet to the east.” Jordan turned and watched the Nahual as it
crept toward the frightened girl. She
started to scream as the cat approached.
“No,” Dylan commanded. The cat
stopped in its tracks. It turned and
started to sniff at one of the corpses and then lapped at pooling blood. Jordan vomited to one side as the awful scent
of the dead men and their relaxed bowels overcame his sense of smell.
How
did I get here? I was talking to Rob ten
minutes ago. Jordan closed his eyes and threw up again,
feeling the awful tightening in his guts.
Ten
minutes ago….
“We’re to move in when Kolin
gives the signal.” Jordan whispered.
Kathy swallowed some water from a
bottle she wore on her hip. Next to her,
Dylan’s Nahual listened. The cat had found
the camp and led them to it. The ears on
its head pressed flat against the skull.
“Where’s D?” Jordan asked.
“He’s back at the road. He’ll kill any that run from us,” she said.
“Running is unlikely,” Jordan
said. “They don’t feel fear like we do.”
Robbie shook his head. He had helmet hair, and it remained pasted in
place. “I can’t believe we’re doing
this.”
“You asked for this,” Jordan reminded him. Despite the stress on the word in his last
statement, he managed to keep his voice low.
“I told you everything right after we got back, and it was at your
insistence. I trusted you.”
Robbie’s hand quaked. “And I believed you. But J.P., honestly, I was expecting something
else. I thought you’d been kidnapped. That’s what you told the authorities—”
“The police wouldn’t have
believed us,” Kathy interjected. “This whole thing’s a nightmare.” She wiped her eyes. “First there’s Dustin; now Jess. I’m not going to insult his memory by having
people snicker behind our backs. If we’d
come clean, they would’ve thought we were on drugs. And there’s no way we could have passed a test
to disprove that notion. Not one bit,”
she said. Jordan saw her eyes mist
over. He never knew what to say when she
spoke about Dustin. “They had her
committed, you know?”
“Yes,” Robbie answered. “You guys really couldn’t have passed a drug
test?”
“Oh hell no,” she said. “Jordy snorted so much coke that I doubt he
even has nose hair.”
Jordan glared at her.
“You did coke?” Robbie asked him.
Jordan ignored the question. “Look, I’m sorry, Rob. If I could have sent a message, I would have. But I can’t keep apologizing for this. You know I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Robbie’s eyes fell to his muddy
hands. “I’m supposed to be on my way to
Boston University…Not killing monsters.”
“And we’ll get you there. Kathy
and I are headed in the same direction. But
we needed to deal with this first.”
“Where are they coming from?”
Robbie asked.
Jordan shrugged and said
nothing. He could see Robbie trembling.
“I’m scared,” Robbie whispered.
“I am too.” Jordan reached out
and hugged his friend, and Robbie quieted down at the feel of Jordan’s
fingertips on his hair. Soon, his
heartbeat slowed, and he wiped his runny nose off on a corner of a shirt sleeve.
“Do you think you’ll find it there?” Robbie asked. “It” in this case was a euphemism for “Black
Tower.” Jordan knew by the way Robbie inflected
the word.
“I don’t know anything for
certain,” Jordan admitted. “All I do know
is that it’s in a place that’s as cold as a deep freeze. When you look at the planet Earth, there are
a lot of places that fit that description—too many miles really. I could search a lifetime and not find it.”
“I wish I could’ve gotten into
Cornell. I think you cheated on your
S.A.T. No one gets a perfect score on
the math section and plays hockey like you do.
It isn’t fair.”
“I didn’t cheat,” Jordan snapped. He looked through the trees to see if Kolin
had moved from his position yet. The
clank of chains emanated from the clearing they had on stakeout. Even if the girl were to escape, the azghuls
would only just run her down. “I scored
average on the other two sections. My
overall score was 500 points lower than Kat’s, and Cornell would have never
looked twice at me if it wasn’t for hockey.”
“Why can’t you come to BU? Its reputation’s about equal,” Robbie said.
“Even if I wanted to I can’t
change now. I’ve been given a need-based
scholarship to an Ivy League school. Do
you have any idea what an honor it is for a poor person like me to attend
Cornell?”
“It won’t cover all your bills,”
Robbie countered.
“It has to,” Jordan said. “Kat’s in the same boat.”
“I don’t mind asking for help,
unlike you,” Kathy said. “Dylan worked
all summer to help me out, and he’s getting a job in Ithaca. You could ask Kolin.”
Robbie’s expression soured. “I hate him.
You’re just fucking him for his money.”
“Stop it.” Jordan leveled a
single finger at Robbie’s nose when he said that. “I’m paying my own way with my own money.”
Kathy just shook her head.
If Jordan had one crippling vice,
it was pride. In addition, he felt that
this quest was his to bear alone. He’d
never borrow money if he couldn’t pay it back.
Dead
men can’t pay back loans.
Robbie dropped his eyes to his
lap. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. He paused, obviously weighing his next
question carefully. “What’s the Big Red
like?”
“They picked me from a lot of
other folks so I guess they’re okay. I’ve
got a chance to play as a starting forward.
Aren’t you at least proud of me? We used to talk about this stuff in
middle school.”
“We used to talk about a lot of
things,” he muttered.
Jordan had chosen Cornell with
care. They owned a particle collider
called C.H.E.S.S.—the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source—located under the
Upper Alumni Athletic Field. This
machine could hurl oppositely charged electrons around counter–rotating paths
at a velocity that approached the speed of light.
Jordan intended to use it to find
the Black Tower.
In 2003, Dr. Roderick MacKinnon
won the Nobel Prize for chemistry using the C.H.E.S.S. for groundbreaking work in
explaining how a class of proteins helped to generate nerve impulses—the
electrical activity that underlies all movement, sensation, and perhaps even
thought. It was impossible to gauge the
impact Dr. MacKinnon’s discovery would have on the world of medicine. But Dr. MacKinnon’s research gave Jordan a
great idea.
MacKinnon’s use of the C.H.E.S.S.
led Jordan to a project overseen by a Dr. Elizabeth Wolfson. This obscure professor had been mapping
isotopic signatures contained within millions of years of Antarctic ice cores
to create the world’s first comprehensive climate-change model.
On Avalon, Jordan had observed
that Kolin’s Geiger counter detected radiation that resulted from the fission
of uranium-235. When uranium broke apart,
there were many elements formed in the catch all term “nuclear waste.” One of these in particular was a rare earth
element called neodymium. Its atomic
number was 60 on the periodic table of the elements. All that Jordan had to do was connect the
dots. First, he needed ice cores. Well, these had already been gathered by
scientists for years, so what he really needed was access to them. Second, Jordan needed a means of detecting an
element invisible to a Geiger counter that also had the ability to do so in a
relatively short amount of time.
C.H.E.S.S. could do this.
It all came together for Jordan
once he had time to think about what he had observed.
When Jordan first noted the
silver light that emanated from the tiny glass spiders, he had an idea. From Maxwell’s equations, all electronics
depended upon the interaction of opposing charges—in a word—magnets. Neodymium magnets were the strongest of their
kind, and they could be found in every electronic device from smart phones to
digital computers. More importantly, neodymium
magnets were also silver in color.
At its heart, Z.E.R.O. was
nothing more than a living computer and just like everything else, subject to
the laws of the universe. If energy was
life, then these magnets were blood. Jordan
could use a neodymium footprint in the ice cores to isolate the Black Tower’s
location.
No structure, no matter how
sound, could survive completely intact buried in miles of glacial ice and not
sustain damage. If even microscopic
fissures developed, then it’s possible that neodymium could have leaked into
the Antarctic water table. Jordan bet
everything that once he examined some of the ice samples stored at the Cornell
laboratory he would find a few with unusually high concentrations. When bombarded by the confocal x-ray
fluorescent microscope, the neodymium contained therein would luminesce in a
known frequency that could be tracked and catalogued. All that remained for Jordan to do was impress
Professor Wolfson at the head of the climate-change project. If he succeeded, she would more than likely
allow him to work as her research assistant….
The sound of Robbie voice
recalled him back to the present.
He blinked, suddenly aware he was
on all fours and staring at his own puke.
Robbie prodded him with his left foot.
“Jordan, you’re scaring the shit out of me. Don’t have a nervous breakdown. I need you.”
Jordan turned his head and
watched Kolin walk over to the girl.
The Brit stepped over the bodies
as if death didn’t bother him.
Jordan wiped his mouth off and
pulled his mask down. Then, he reached
over and did the same for Robbie using the clean side of his glove. He covered Rob’s face by tugging on the
knitted cap. That caused him to
stir. “Come on,” he urged, standing up,
and Robbie followed.
The girl couldn’t see them. Only Jordan could see in this light without
the aid of night vision.
“Don’t kill me…please,” the girl
begged—eyes wide and hand stretched out in the darkness. She could see the outline of Kolin’s body and
moved to the maximum limit that the chain on her leg would allow.
Kolin took out a flashlight and
shone it on her. Jordan turned his head
away as the light seared his eyes. The
girl covered her face with her hands. She
had open sores on her skin, claw marks, and bloody scrapes. Her clothes had been torn, and her face had
been bruised and battered.
Kolin aimed his gun at the lock
and shot twice, blowing it apart. The
girl fell to the ground and sobbed. Kathy
stepped forward, face covered, and took the metal restraint from off the girl’s
ankle. “You’re safe,” she said.
“I know you feel like shite, but I have questions, and I need
answers. Where are you from?” Kolin
asked her, his accent thick on his lips.
He changed the clip in his gun. The
sound of him loading one in the chamber echoed in the silent wood.
“St. Louis,” she said, wiping
tears from her eyes. “I just want to go
home.”
“We’ll drop you off in the
nearest town,” Kolin reassured her. “Did
the men that held you say owt you
might recall?”
“I don’t know,” she said through
sobs. “They spoke in a language I didn’t
understand.”
Kolin shook his head and grimaced
at Dylan. “Bugger this.”
The girl sniffed. “What?”
“He means you know nothing,”
Kathy said.
“W-Wait,” the girl stammered. “There’s one thing. They kept saying ‘oculus.’”
Kathy, Dylan, and Kolin looked at
Jordan. It was obvious they expected him
to say something.
“What?” he asked.
Kolin tapped the Glock against
his slender thigh. “What does it mean, mate?” Kolin asked Jordan.
“It’s Latin. It means eye.
It could refer to any number of things or even places. It’s too non-specific for me to be sure.”
Kolin cursed. He flicked on the safety and tucked the gun
in his pants. “No use pissing around
with her anymore. Cover her head and
let’s get her back to the truck. She
needs medical care.”
Dylan stepped forward and dropped
a black hood over the girl’s head. She
didn’t resist him at all. The fight had
long ago been beaten out of her. “Where’re
you taking me?” she asked. Her voice quaked
with desperation.
“Home,” Dylan replied. “But most of that journey will be up to you.” He lifted the girl to her feet. Kolin took lead through the wood, and Jordan
trailed behind them with Robbie close on the right. Jordan knelt and closed the eyes of one of
the men with his fingers.
The Horcus frightened Jordan. As far as he knew, it stole light, color, and
life from all things in the world. The
servants that they encountered had all been marked like this. For them, all light had failed. They had been
left without a soul and lost within complete darkness. And someday soon, Jordan knew it would be
coming for him.
He closed his eyes and said, “I
can live a normal life.”
And then he grabbed the gun he’d used to murder
two men and tucked it into his pants.
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