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“Hey. Hey! Leave my mother alone! Okay, now? Now I’m mad. You made me mad. You listening to me, Mr. Heebie-Jeebies Adams and your friend, Jokes Jefferson? When I get up out of this chair, you will be sorry. Very sorry. I’m not kidding. You don’t want to fool around with me. I’m really, really mad.”
Jake Marlowe fiddled with a control. “Sam. It’s going to be fine.”
“Fine for me or fine for the chair?”
From inside a drawer, Marlowe withdrew a large syringe filled with a blue liquid. Fear curled around Sam’s insides, turning them cold. “Hey. Hey! What’s that for?”
“Hold still, please, Sam.”
“No, you don’t understand. I hate needles. A lot. I—ahhhh!”
Marlowe plunged the needle into Sam’s arm. Sam could feel the blue liquid rushing into his veins, an oily cold while the site of the shot itched and burned like an ant bite. In his head, he heard his mother: Sergei, breathe. Marlowe drew down the golden cap and screwed it into place against Sam’s skull. The serum was roaring through his body as if he were the third rail of a subway track taking on current.
“Careful. I just washed my hair,” he joked to keep the panic at bay. His heart pounded.
“Relax, Sam.” Marlowe.
“Please, Jake…” Miriam pleaded as Jefferson and Adams secured the other cap on her head.
“I promise, Miriam,” Jake Marlowe said. “On my honor.”
“You have no honor.”
“Careful, Miriam,” Jake said. His expression slid into something hard and cold, the change so sudden and shocking that Sam was reminded of the way ghosts turned on a dime.
Sam was street smart. He’d grown up on the South Side of Chicago, running from bullies who taunted him for being small and a Jew. He didn’t scare easily. But as Jake Marlowe flipped two switches and the Eye of Providence started with a chugging hum that grew deafeningly loud, Sam was animal-afraid. He wanted out of his own body. “Please,” he whispered. “Please don’t.”
Jake Marlowe pulled the goggles up over his eyes. Adams and Jefferson followed suit with their own.
“Where’s our goggles, huh?” Sam yelled over the noise. The serum slithered inside him, taking over. His breathing was rapid, shallow. “What’s with this stuff you gave me?”
“I need you to see, Sam,” Marlowe shouted over the humming. “I need you to tell me everything you see.”
The blue lightning flared against the glass tube and shot up the antennas of the Eye, up into the clouds above, making them angry. It reached into Sam’s body, too. They were joined. Everything the machine felt, Sam felt. His body shook. Sam strained against the sudden force. He tried to speak but could only grunt: “Nnn-nng-ng.” The tear between worlds was stretching wider, birthing pains that rippled through Sam as if he, too, were being stretched open. His skin burned as if a million fire ants crawled underneath. As the pressure increased, he bit his tongue. Blood coated the back of his throat, making him gag. He feared he would choke. He wanted to scream but he could not remember how. All he knew was fear.
“Easy, Sam. Don’t fight it. You’ll be fine.” Jake Marlowe’s voice. “Greatness requires some sacrifice.”
He was no
t fine. He was not fine not fine not fine. Tears trickled over his hot cheeks. A burnt-sugar scorch filled his nostrils. He bucked and arched from the current and the serum warring inside him. The dials whirred to a high whine. The life was being sucked from Sam’s very bones in order to power Jake Marlowe’s monstrous machine.
Sergei. His mother in his head. Whatever you see, my love, hold fast to yourself. Do not lose yourself to it. Fight, Sergei. Fight.
Sam could only repeat a mantra in his head: Don’t see me, don’t see me, don’t see me. The scream that was torn at last from Sam seemed to echo across forever. And then, in an instant, the pain stopped. He was floating. He was weightless and without form. Around him, the sky exploded into newness, the dawn of all time, and Sam was there for it, joined to it. Every cell in his body yearned for that beautiful dark—no loneliness, no hunger, no fear or grief. Only connection. Belonging. There was the sky and Sam was the sky. He waited for a word to be uttered to usher him into being.
“Sam?” Marlowe’s voice. It was a universe away. It was an intimate whisper in his ear. “Sam, what do you see?”
A ball of dust spun faster and faster, flattening as it did, and swirled into a gaseous sea of color. Sam felt he was inside the womb of a star and he was the star, watching himself being born. Life inventing itself over and over. Creation, infinite and eternal. How could he possibly report on something so ecstatic? Words were insufficient.
“Sam?” Marlowe.
“It’s… beautiful.” Sam.
“What do you see?” Marlowe.
“It’s like… like the beginning of the world.” Sam. Was he Sam? He was more than Sam. He was and was not and was again.
The voices of Marlowe and the Shadow Men drifted toward Sam like the conversation was coming through a tinny radio: Told you… abundant resources in that world… King of Crows… capture him and have it all… but what does this King of Crows want… hasn’t told us, just wants to keep the breach open, as do we.…
