Page 106 of Middlegame

“Not far,” says Dodger, and slings her leg over her bike. “Let’s end this.”

The sun won’t be up for another half hour. Only the moon watches them go.

WATER

Timeline: 6:04 PDT, June 17, 2016 (it goes on and on).

The air off the Pacific is freezing, and there is no coastline: there is only fog, all-encompassing, all-devouring. None of them are dressed for this. They shiver uncontrollably as they ride down the final short slope to the cliff’s edge, looking out on the remains of the Sutro Baths.

There’s something timeless about the ruins, something ancient about the great concrete blocks that jut from the sounding sea, the long, smooth foundations being beaten by the waves. The tide is low enough that the shape of the structure is clear, even if there is no obvious way—no marked way—down to its beginning. Signs posted by the state warn against urban exploration, threaten with legal action or death by water for those foolish souls who choose to go any closer, to look any deeper than they can from the safety of the shore.

“Can you get us there?” Roger asks, looking to Erin.

And Erin, who sees the weak points in the world—the chaotic places, the things that are getting ready to give way, like the loose earth of a foot trail down a sheer cliff face—nods.

They descend in a line, Erin first, Dodger behind her where her still-developing depth perception won’t be a danger, Roger in the rear, ready to grab and steady should either of them slip or, worse, fall. The cliff is steep and unforgiving, even though the distance to the concrete foundations is not so great. This was never intended to be climbed on foot, not by God, not by man, and not by the alchemy that arranged for the Baths to burn to the ground.

(In Fremont, three homeless teens are watched by a nameless alchemist whose planchette insists they’re the cuckoos he’s been seeking. None of these children stand upon the improbable road. He knows that as surely as he knows Leigh would kill them for wasting her time. When he calls in, it’s to say the tickets rode alone, no human hands to hold them, and that their targets are not here.)

(A bus bound for Reno is pulled over by a state patrolman who has driven this stretch of road, under a variety of identities, for over sixty years. Immortality does not carry with it the skills to change professions, and owing that immortality to a man like James Reed does not leave many opportunities for study or learning a new trade. The three men sleeping at the back with tickets that resonate as someone else’s are left to slumber without incident.)

(There is value in the loyalty of subordinates. There is mercy in their betrayals.)

They descend by inches, by feet, by years. The air goes flat around them, losing the resonance of the wind, even as it continues to grow colder. At the same time, the cold loses its power. Roger and Dodger walk straighter, stand taller. Only Erin shivers, and when she looks back at them, she can barely focus on their faces. They don’t have individual features. They are one and they are neither, and they are so close to one of the focal points of the world that there is no difference between those two ideals.

The door is gone. The stairs are gone. There is only the foundation, gray and cold and blackened in places where the fire had its way. Erin steps aside when she reaches the first of the great implacable stones. Dodger steps forward, head cocked, looking at the structure like she can see it as it was meant to be. And she is Time and she is Math and maybe she can; maybe she sees what was, instead of what truly, terribly is.

“The blueprints would have put one of the stairways here,” she says, and takes a step into empty air. She does not fall: logic has been suspended. Instead, she shifts her weight onto a step that isn’t there, a step that glimmers mercury silver and purified gold in the shivering sea air. She takes another step, and another, and the steps remain sketched spectral and true behind her.

Roger and Erin exchange a look. Roger speaks first.

“Dodger seems to be walking into a building that doesn’t exist.”

“Sure looks like it.”

“The building isn’t there.”

“Nope.”

“But she’s going up the stairs anyway. The stairs that aren’t there either.”

“Yup.”

“Can we walk into the building that doesn’t exist?”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

Roger turns to look at the glimmering ghost of the stairs, and says, with a firm certainty, “The stairs are there. The stairs are real. The stairs will support our weight without dropping us into the ocean to drown or die of hypothermia.”

The glimmering stairs lose some of their shine, silver and gold replaced by half-visible concrete, like they’re becoming solid again; like he’s called them back into the world. Roger takes his first cautious step. As with Dodger, the steps hold him; there is no give to whatever he stands upon, whatever he’s called more truly into being.

His sister is almost to the top. He hurries after her, and Erin brings up the rear, and all is silence, save for the beating of the sea against the shore.

The stairs end abruptly. Dodger puts out a foot, testing the air, and there’s nothing there: only emptiness, and the fall that waits beyond it, looking for another body to claim. She pulls her foot back, balanced on the thin ribbon of almost that has carried her this far, and looks over her shoulder to where Roger is hurrying up behind her.

“There aren’t any more stairs,” she reports.

“What comes after stairs?” He stops on the step below hers, putting his hands on her shoulders. Color blossoms back into his world, deep and bright and limitless. “Look for it.”