The wolves glanced at one another. Maya thought they might attack, but then the man standing closest to the exit slipped out of the auditorium. Everyone lowered their weapons and hurried after him.
Gabriel reached out and touched Maya’s arm, then smiled as if they were back in the Chinatown loft. “Are you really here, Maya? Or maybe I’m just having another dream…”
“It’s not a dream. I’m here. I found you.”
Maya placed her sword back in its sheath and embraced him. She could tell that he had lost weight. His body was fragile and weak.
“We can’t stay here,” Gabriel said. “Once they divide up the food, they’ll come looking for us.”
“So they’re like human beings back in our world? They can get hungry and thirsty?”
“And they can die.”
Maya nodded. “I saw the execution in front of the building.”
“These people can’t remember their past,” Gabriel said. “They have no memories of love or hope or any other kind of happiness.”
Gabriel put his arm around her shoulder, and Maya helped him out of the auditorium. Out in the hallway, they stumbled past the two men she had killed.
“How did you get here? You’re not a Traveler.”
“I used an access point.”
“What does that mean?”
Maya told him about the sundial of the Emperor Augustus and her journey to Ethiopia with Simon Lumbroso. She decided not to mention that the Tabula had attacked Vine House and almost killed his Free Runner friends. There was a time for these revelations, but not now-when they had to escape.
Gabriel opened a door to a room filled with rows of green file cabinets. A musty smell reminded Maya of old books rotting in a cellar. The only light came from two gas flares burning from pipes that had been ripped out of the walls.
“This doesn’t look safe,” Maya said. “We should get out of the building.”
“There’s no place to hide on this island. We have to find the passageway back to our world.”
“But that could be anywhere.”
“The commissioner of patrols said that the legends about Travelers were always connected to this room. The passageway is here. I can feel it.”
Gabriel grabbed a metal table and pushed it against the door. He seemed to gain strength as he found boxes and chairs and piled them on the table. For weeks, Maya had fantasized about this moment-when she and Gabriel would be together in this strange world. But what would happen now? When Simon Lumbroso first told her about the access points he had stressed, You have to go back the way you came. Maya never considered the possibility that her only way back would be lost within the dark river. Could she leave with Gabriel, or would she be trapped in this place?
When Gabriel finished blocking the door, he hurried past the cabinets to a workstation in the middle of the room. Suddenly, he stopped and stared at a bookshelf pushed against the wall.
“See that black line? It might be something.”
He grabbed an armful of ledger books and tossed them onto the worktable. Then he pushed the bookshelf sideways, exposing a wall. The Traveler smiled at Maya like a math student who had just solved a difficult equation.
“Our way home…”
“What do you mean, Gabriel?”
“Right here. This is the passageway.” He outlined the shape with his index finger. “Can you see it?”
Maya leaned forward and saw nothing but cracked plaster. She knew at that moment-knew without words-that she was going to lose him. Quickly, she stepped back into the shadows so that he couldn’t read her face. “Yes,” she lied. “I see something.”
A thumping noise came from the entrance to the file room. The wolves had opened the door a few inches, and now they were throwing their bodies against it-forcing back the barricade.
The Traveler grabbed her hand and held it tightly. “Don’t be frightened, Maya. We’re going to cross over together.”
“Something could go wrong. We might lose each other.”
“We’ll always be connected,” Gabriel said. “I promise, no matter what happens, we will be together.”
He took a few steps forward, and then she watched his body pass through the plaster as if it were a waterfall with a cave hidden behind it. He pulled her along: Come with me, my love. But her hand struck the hard surface of the wall and Gabriel’s fingers slipped away.
With one final shove, the wolves forced open the door. Gabriel’s barricade slipped sideways and everything hit the floor. Maya hurried away from the workstation and stepped between two rows of file cabinets. She could hear deep breathing and whispered voices. A warrior would have picked a familiar battleground, but these men had allowed anger to influence their choices.
She waited for five heartbeats and then came out into the side aisle. A man was standing about twenty feet away from her holding a steel pole with a knife blade lashed to one end. Maya returned to her previous spot between the two rows of cabinets as a second man with a spear came around the corner.
Her hands moved without thought or form. Running forward, she aimed the sword at the man’s eyes, then flicked her wrists and knocked the spear blade downward. She stepped on the blade, holding it to the floor, and jabbed upward, stabbing her opponent in the chest.
The dead man fell backward, but he had already perished within her mind. She pulled out two drawers and used them as steps to climb onto the top of the cabinet. Maya was in a three-foot space between the cabinet and the ceiling, watching the first attacker move cautiously down the aisle. Time slowed down. She felt as if she were observing everything through two eyeholes in a mask.
When the spearman reached his companion, she jumped behind him and slashed down the length of his backbone. Now one body lay on top of the other and the room was quiet.
MAYA LEFT THE school and walked down the street to a twisted stop sign. A hundred yards away, an enormous gas flare trembled like a candle flame near an open window. She turned in a slow circle and surveyed her new world. It no longer made a difference whether she went to the left or to the right. The wolves roamed through every part of the island. Occasionally, she might find a hiding place, but this would be only an interlude in an endless battle.
Two men carrying clubs and knives appeared at the end of the street. “Over here!” they shouted. “She’s right here! We found her!” A few seconds later, three other men joined them. They circled the gas flare and stood in front of the light.
Standing alone, Maya understood the full meaning of her choice. She would be trapped in this realm of anger and hate until she was destroyed. Damned by the flesh. Yes, that was true. But had she also been saved?
Maya remembered what Gabriel had told her about these men-they had no memory of the past. But she could still recall her life in the Fourth Realm. It was a world of great beauty, but it was also filled with glittering distractions and false gods. What was real? What gave life meaning? At the point of death, everything was lost except love. It could sustain you, heal you, make you whole.
The five men were talking to one another, organizing a plan of attack. Maya drew her sword and swung it around so that the light from the flare was reflected on the blade. “Come on!” she shouted. “I’m ready for you! Come toward me!”
When the men didn’t move, she stood up straight, gripping her sword with both hands and concentrating her power in her lower legs. Saved by the blood, Maya thought.
She took a deep breath and ran toward the wolves as her shadow passed across the broken surface of the street.
John Twelve Hawks
