He started down and disappeared below floor level.
After a few seconds, his voice echoed up from below. "Come on, Miles, you chickenshit bastard. Let's go."
Kenway pulled his .45 automatic from under his sweater, flicked off the safety, then put it away again. He sighed, looked around, andwith much less enthusiasm than Zaleskistarted down.
Jack stepped to the edge of the hole and watched the bristling hair atop Kenway's head recede into the depths. Damn, that looked deep.
Lew came up beside him. "I'll be. There is some light down there."
"Way down," Jack said, spotting the faint flickers.
"Are you sure you don't want to go too?" Melanie said, looking at Jack. She sounded almost ... hopeful.
Jack wondered about that. A moment ago when he'd said he was leaving, she wanted him to stay. Now she seemed to be encouraging him to leave by another route.
"I'm very sure," Jack said. "In fact, I don't think I've ever been so sure of anything in my life. But you said you wanted to talk to me."
Lew jumped in before Melanie could answer. "Before we go any further, I need an answer to something. When I asked you if it was so bad down there, you said, 'Not for me and Frayne.' What did you mean by that?"
Melanie sighed and looked away. Jack saw a touch of sadness and regret in her eyes.
"Lewis ... when I called it 'home,' I wasn't exaggerating. When that gateway opened, and I entered the Otherness, that's exactly what it felt likecoming home. For the first time in my life I felt like I belonged. And Frayne will feel it too."
"But I won't?" Lew said, his voice full of hurt.
Zaleski's voice echoed up from the hole then.
"Hey! Something weird down here ... like everything's floating."
Melanie went to the edge and called down. "That means you're almost there. Gravity reverses at the transition point. You'll have to climb up the rest of the way."
She waited, and a few seconds later Zaleski's voice came back, tinged with wonder and excitement, teetering on the verge of hysterical laughter.
"Fucking-ay, you're right! This is the weirdest shit I've ever seen!"
"Never mind them," Lew said. "What about me? Why won't I feel like I belong there?"
Melanie turned back to her husband. She spoke matter-of-factly, as if explaining the obvious to a child. "Because you'd be an outsider there, Lewis. You have no Otherness in you."
"Sure I do," he said, pointing to his leg. "I'm not normal. I'm different too. Not as different as you, maybe, but"
"Different inside" she said. "Frayne and I are different right down to our genes. You're completely human, Lewis. We're not. We're hybrids."
Lew looked stunned. His jaw worked a few times before he could speak. "Hybrids?"
"Yes, Lewis. Hybrids." She walked over to Canfield's wheelchair and rested her claw on his shoulder. "Neither of us really belongs here."
Jack noticed how Lew's eyes locked on the spot where his wife was touching Canfield. His heart went out to the guy, but he couldn't help him. Lew was pushing for answers and Melanie was giving them to him.
She could take it a little easier on him, though.
"How?" he said. "When?"
"Late in the winter of 1968, right here in Monroe, the Otherness spawned something in this plane. Frayne and I were just tiny, newly formed masses of cells within our mothers at the time. We were vulnerable to the influence of the Otherness thenour DNA was altered forever as it made its beachhead."
"What beachhead?" Jack said.
Obviously she was referring to the "burst of Otherness" Canfield had mentioned. But what exactly were they talking about?
"It was not something anyone would take notice of. But the fate of this plane was sealed in that instant." Her eyes fairly glowed as she spoke. "A child was conceived. A special childThe One. He is grown now, and soon he will make his presence known."
"Sounds like Olive's Antichrist," Jack said.
Melanie smirked. "Compared to The One, Olive's Antichrist would be a fitting playmate for your children. When he comes into his own, everything will change.
The very laws of physics and nature as you know them will be transformed. And after the cataclysm ... Otherness will reign."
Ooookay, Jack thought. Time to go.
"Sounds like fun," he said, turning toward the couch to retrieve his jacket. "But I've got to get moving."
"No, please," she said, moving away from Canfield and gripping his armJack was relieved she used her hand instead of her claw. "Not yet. I must speak to you."
"Hey, that thing's getting hot," Lew said, holding up his palm to the Tesla device but not touching it.
Jack could feel the heat faintly from where he was standing.
"Lewis," Melanie said, "I wish to speak to his man alone."
"Alone?" Lew said. "Why alone? What have you got to say to Jack that I can't hear?"
"I'll tell you about it later, Lewis. Wait for me outside, in the car."
He stared at her. "You've changed, Mel."
"Yes ... I have. I finally know who I am, and I've learned why I'm the way I am. And I'm proud of it. Please, Lewis. Wait for me in the car. I'll be up in a few minutes and we'll go home together."
His eyes widened. "Really? We're going home?" He glanced at the hole. "But I thought ... "
"The gateway will be closing soon. I have some things I must do before it does, and then I'll join you."
Jack didn't believe it for a minute, but Lew seemed to be swallowing the whole package.
"Sure, Mel," he said, nodding as he started toward the steps. "I'll wait for you outside. For a minute there ... "
"I would never hurt you, Lewis. Surely you know that."
"I do, Mel," he said. "I know you wouldn't." He hurried up the steps.
Canfield rolled over to the stairway and peered up, then wheeled around to face Melanie.
"Why did you tell him that?" he said in a low voice.
"Because I don't want him hurt," she said.
"How can he not be?" Canfield was twisted half around. Clinking noises rose from the pouch behind his seat back as he fumbled inside it.
"I mean physically. He was good to me, Frayne. He treated me like a human being instead of a freak. I owe him for that."
Jack felt like he was eavesdropping on a private conversation.
"Should I be hearing this?" he said. "Because frankly, I don't care to."
He glanced at the Tesla device and was sure its dome was starting to glow. He wanted out of here. The growing heat was only part of it; the whole scene was starting to annoy him. Especially Melanie and her hybrid buddy Canfieldsomething going on between those two, something that made him queasy.
Melanie turned to him and smiled ... not a smile to be particularly trusted. "Everything will be made clear in a minute or two."
"Jack," Canfield said, still over by the steps, still rattling around in his chair's rear pouch, "could you help me with this a minute?"
The Tesla device's dome was glowing a dull cherry red now. Jack was glad to get away from the heat.
Jack came around behind the wheelchair. He noticed a length of sturdy chain running out the rear pouch, around the support column, and back into the pouch.
"Right here," Canfield said, indicating the pouch. "It's stuck. Could you just yank that the rest of the way out?"
Jack reached in next to Canfield's hand, grabbed a fistful of links
and felt something cold and metallic snap around his wrist just before Canfield dove out of the wheelchair and slitheredslitheredaway across the floor.
"What the?"
Jack yanked his hand out of the pouch and stared at the chrome handcuff around his right wrist. The second cuff was closed through the links of the chain looped around the support column.
Sudden panic at being trapped rippled through his veins, just as revulsion rippled through his gut at the sight of Canfield's boneless legs jutting from his pant cuffs; they seemed more like tentacles than real legs.