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And then he was unconscious.
For days, Luther dreamed. In his dreams, he saw the funny gray man with the stovepipe hat. “Greetings, Luther Clayton. Deserter. Do you hear your brethren crying?”
Luther did. He heard them screaming: Help us. Help us. Help us.
When Luther came to, his head pounded. And his legs were gone below the knees. There were voices in the room. Real voices. Jake Marlowe and a pompous general and a sergeant at arms. Luther saw them through the slits of his heavy eyes.
“Margaret Walker tried to smuggle out documents and expose the operation. We’ve jailed her for sedition.” The general.
“And Miriam?” Marlowe.
“An enemy of the state. We can’t allow such power to go loose. We’ll be keeping her under lock and key.”
“What about Will?”
“He’s a broken man. No threat that we can see,” the general said. “Mr. Marlowe, what happened to my soldiers? Where is the one forty-four?”
“I don’t know. But if I could just re-create the experiment with adjustments—think of the enormous good it could do, all that energy—”
“We’ll be shutting down the division, effective immediately.”
“No! General, just give me a chance to perfect it—”
“That machine is far too dangerous. We’ve already lost Rotke Wasserman and the entire regiment to this disaster. We’ll send the telegrams to the families with our sympathies. We’ll take it from here, Mr. Marlowe.”
“Sir, I think he’s awake.” The sergeant at arms.
They all turned to Luther now.
“Luther? Can you hear me?” Marlowe. He looked a wreck.
Luther nodded. Pain shot through him from his forehead down his spine, but he felt nothing below his waist.
“Did you see what happened to the one forty-four? Do you know where they are?”
“They’re with him,” Luther croaked.
“Who?”
“The land is old, the land is vast, he has no future, he has no past, his coat is sewn with many woes, he’ll bring the dead, the King of Crows.”
The general’s upper lip curled. “What the devil does that mean?”
“He’s gravely injured, General, and shell-shocked. There’s no telling.”
The general stood at Luther’s bedside and patted his arm with confidence. “You’ll be right as rain soon enough, soldier. A grateful nation thanks you for your service.”
But the screaming did not stop. Luther saw his ghostly friends in every corner of his mind. Help us! they begged. Oh, he would go mad!
The Shadow Men came to see him in the dark of night.
“Are we taking him out?” the one asked the other. He straightened a loop of piano wire between his gloved hands.
The other Shadow Man snapped his fingers in front of Luther’s face. “He can’t say anything. His mind’s gone.”
“Still.”
“We wait for orders,” the Shadow Man said. “Needs to look like he died in his sleep.”
