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There!
The instant he focused on the hole, an amoeba came rushing at him, and just like before wrapped itself around his head. But this time he did not panic, but tried to will himself toward that hole.
The amoeba evaporated, and Malik reassured himself that he had passed the defensive system. He felt himself moving toward the hole, which seemed to recede as he approached, growing ever so slightly larger, far too slowly, as if it was moving away almost as quickly as he advanced.
Suddenly there was another organism, a mass of organs and bits of bone, and things he did not even want to guess at. He stopped moving and began to pull back, but then, a slight shift of perspective, and he saw a face.
“Francis?”
Her answer was not a sound but a color. A color never represented in even the biggest Crayola box. He knew nevertheless that it was an affirmative.
She reached with a bony claw wreathed in pulsing veins. He held out his own hand, a hand as deconstructed as hers.
And all at once the two of them were back in the bedroom. In three-dimensional space.
For what felt like a very long time Malik just stood there trembling, breathing hard, looking at Francis. The rainbow effect in her eyes faded and disappeared. Solid objects were solid again, their insides hidden from view.
“Are you okay?” Francis asked, and Malik realized it was for the third time.
“I think so,” Malik said in a harsh whisper. Then, “Wow.”
“I’m really sorry I let go of you,” Francis said. “You must have been scared.”
“Scared? I was terrified,” Malik admitted. “It’s . . . I don’t even know how to make sense of it.”
“Yeah, it’s weird, huh?” Francis said.
“You have a gift for understatement. There are people who spend a lot of money on drugs and never see anything one-tenth as weird.”
“Did you find what you were after?”
Malik considered. “Maybe,” he allowed. “You know what didn’t happen? I did not feel the Dark Watchers. Just like you don’t. Whatever they are, the effect—the Watcher effect—is something in three dimensions that is gone or transformed in n-space.”
Francis nodded politely, but Malik was pretty sure that she was not interested in the physics of it all, let alone the metaphysics. To Francis, it was a trick she could do. It was a power. But she didn’t grasp just how great a power it was.
“They have defenses, those things, those amoeba-looking things,” Malik said. “But I think that’s sort of an automated system, and not very effective. I would guess they are system cleaners, subroutines designed to redirect any random bit of data that takes the wrong turn. But I’m not some random databit, I’m a whole system.”
“So, no more of that, huh?” Francis said, already losing interest and edging toward the door.
“Well, not today, anyway. It’s very . . . unsettling.”
But did he intend to go back to find out what was through that blank hole of nothingness? To seek out whoever was behind this deconstruction of reality? To confront whoever or whatever was screwing with the software of the universe to allow the growth of monsters and destroy human civilization?
Hell yes, I’m going back.
But he wisely said none of that, and instead said, “Shall we go find the others, see what they’re up to?”
CHAPTER 7
Malmedy in the Pine Barrens
“DAD. THEY’RE GOING to kill us.”
“Now you’re being paranoid,” Markovic said. “They’re probably goi
ng to put us in a hotel for the night.”
Simone hoped he was right. She tried to push away a growing panic as they were moved by rows to a side door and marched down a hallway. A National Guard private stood there handing out bottles of water and granola bars, smiling, looking normal and sympathetic. It should have calmed Simone’s nerves, but she kept hearing echoes of books she’d read, books about the Holocaust. The Nazis had lulled Jews into a false sense of security as they were sent to die in showers spewing nerve gas.
