I STEPPED INTO the lobby, our brave new world in microcosm. Shattered glass. Mounds of trash piled into corners, like autumn leaves blown there by the wind. Dead bugs on their backs, legs curled up. Bitter cold. So quiet, your breath was the only sound: After the Hum vanished, the Hush.
No sign of Ben. Between the second floor and the stairs, something must have happened to him and not a good something. I eased toward the stairway door, fighting the instinct to haul ass back to Sam before he disappeared like Ben, like Dumbo, like Poundcake and Teacup, like 99.9 percent of everyone on Earth.
Debris crackling beneath my boots. Cold air burning my face and hands. My hands gripping the rifle and my eyes barely blinking in the weak starlight that blared spotlight-bright after the absolute dark of the elevator.
Slow. Slow. No mistakes.
Stairway door. I held the metal handle for a good thirty seconds, ear pressed against the wood, but all I heard was the thumping of my heart. Slowly, I pushed down the handle, pulled the door open to create a crack just wide enough to peek through. Totally dark. Totally soundless. Damn it, Parish. Where the hell are you?
Nowhere to go but up. I slid into the stairwell. Snick: The door closed behind me. Plunged into darkness again, but this time I was determined to keep it on the outside, where it belonged.
The tart smell of death hung in the musty air. A rat, I told myself. Or a raccoon or some other woodland creature that got trapped in here. My boot came down on something squishy. Tiny bones crunched. I wiped off the gooey remains on the edge of a step; I didn’t want to slip, tumble down to the bottom, break my neck, lie helplessly waiting for whoever it was to find me and put a bullet in my brain. That would be bad.
I reached the tiny landing, one more flight, deep breath, almost there, and then the shot rang out, followed by another, then a third, then a whole barrage as whoever was shooting emptied the magazine. I rocketed up the remaining steps, slammed through the door, and charged down the hall toward the room that was now missing a door, the room where my baby brother was, and my toe caught on something—a soft something I didn’t see in my mad dash for Sam—and I went airborne, landing with a jaw-popping force on the thin carpeting, jumped up, glanced back, and saw Ben Parish lying lifelessly there, arms outstretched, dark wet blotch of blood seeping through that ridiculous yellow hoodie, and then Sam screamed and I’m not too late, not too late, and here I come, you sonofabitch, here I come, and in the room a tall shadow loomed over the tiny figure whose tiny finger yanked impotently at the trigger of the empty gun.
I fired. The shadow whirled toward me, then pitched forward, reaching for me.
I slammed my foot down on its neck and jammed the muzzle of the rifle against the back of the shadow’s head.
“Excuse me,” I gasped; I had no breath. “But you have the wrong room.”
AS A CHILD, he dreamed of owls.
He hadn’t thought of the dream in years. Now, as his life slipped away, the memory came back to him.
The memory was not pleasant.
The bird perched on the windowsill, staring into his room with bright yellow eyes. The eyes blinked slowly, rhythmically; otherwise, the owl never moved.
Watching the owl watching him, paralyzed with fear without understanding why, unable to call for his mother and, afterward, the sick feeling all over, nauseated, dizzy, feverish, and the jittery, unnerving sensation of being watched that lingered for days.
When he turned thirteen, the dreams stopped. He had awakened; there was no need to hide the truth anymore. When the time came, his awakened self would need the gifts that the “owl” had given. He understood the dreams’ purpose because his purpose had been revealed.
Make ready. Prepare the way.
The owl had been a lie to protect the tender psyche of his host body. After he awakened, another lie took its place: his life. His humanity was a lie, a mask, like the dream of owls in the dark.
Now he was dying. And the lie was dying with him.
There was no pain. He did not feel the bitter cold. His body seemed to float on a warm, boundless sea. The alarm signals from his nerves to the pain centers of his brain had been shut down. This gentle, painless easing of his human body into oblivion would be the final gift.
And then, after the last human being was dead: rebirth.
A new human body unburdened by the memory of being human. He would not remember the past eighteen years. Those memories and the emotions attached to them would be forever lost—and there was nothing that could be done about the agony attending that knowledge.
Lost. Everything lost.
The memory of her face. Lost. The time with her. Lost. The war declared between what he was and what he pretended to be. Lost.
In the quiet of the winter-draped woods, floating on a boundless sea, he reached for her, and she slipped away.
He knew what would come of it. He had always known. Once he found her imprisoned in snow and carried her back and made her whole, his death would be the price. Virtues are vices now, and death is the cost of love. Not the death of his body. His body was the lie. True death. The death of his humanity. The death of his soul.
In the woods, in the bitter cold, on the surface of a boundless sea, whispering her name, entrusting her memory to the wind, to the embrace of the silent sentinel trees and to the care of the faithful stars, her namesake, pure and everlasting, the uncontained universe contained in her:
Cassiopeia.
HE WOKE TO PAIN.
Blinding pain in his head, his chest, his hands, his ankle. His skin was on fire. He felt as if he’d been dipped in boiling water.
A bird perched on a tree branch above him, a crow, regarding him with regal indifference. The world belonged to the crows now, he thought. The rest were interlopers, short-timers.
Smoke curled in the bare branches overhead: a campfire. And the smell of meat sizzling in a pan.
He was propped up against a tree, covered by a heavy wool blanket, with a rolled-up winter parka for a pillow. Slowly, he lifted his head an inch and realized immediately that any movement at all was a very bad idea.
A tall woman came into view carrying an armload of wood, then vanished from sight for a moment while she fed the fire.
“Good morning.” Her voice was low-pitched, lilting, and vaguely familiar.
She sat beside him, pulled her knees to her chest, and wrapped her long arms around her legs. Her face was familiar, too. Fair-skinned, blond, Nordic features, like a Viking princess.
“I know you,” he whispered. His throat burned. She pressed the mouth of her canteen against his raw lips, and he drank for a long time.
“That’s good,” she said. “You were talking nonsense last night. I was worried you’d suffered something a little more serious than a concussion.”
She stood up and disappeared from view again. When she came back, she was holding a frying pan. She sat next to him, placing the pan on the ground between them. She was studying him with the same haughty indifference as the crow.