She reached the shed, doubled over, gasping, then lifted her face and offered a big grin once more.
“Oh shit,” Orlando said in a whimper. “Don’t tell me. The right question is…”
“When?”
He looked around again. “So — what? We shifted back in time to when it was closed? Or forward, because the memorial is there. Yeah that makes more sense. But…”
“But it doesn’t matter,” she chattered. “Went through a portal, we did, when all hell broke loose. They had one open at the base, doing their experiments without thinking. As usual. I pushed you through it as we left the building. It’s not permanent, so don’t worry yourself.”
She laughed at some inside joke, and touched the padlock, which crumbled to dust as if it had been out rusting for centuries.
“I still don’t understand.”
She got up on tiptoes and rapped her knuckles on his forehead. “You really don’t need to. We’re just taking an end route to the transportation system, one that would have been guarded, or at least safeguarded, in any other time but this one.”
“Why? Can’t we just snag a plane to get to Alaska?”
She stopped, and her smile faded. “Did I misread you? Did you get your flying license and not tell anyone?”
“No. I thought… maybe you could fly.”
“Yeah,” she said in a mocking tone, “I learned by being locked in a tiny cell all my life.”
Orlando held back at the doorway, smelling the ancient dust and the crumbling masonry, and noticing only a stairway and broken iron bannister leading down.
“But you’re…”
“All-knowing, all-seeing?”
“Yeah.”
“No. I know things, but not everything. I can’t bake an apple pie. Can’t construct a diesel engine, and sure as shit can’t fly any sort of aerial vehicle.”
“Okay then.”
“Okay.” She stopped at the top, fiddled with a control panel and flipped some fuses. “I can, however, turn on some lights, assuming the generators still run.”
He started following her down the stairs, into the gloom, which suddenly flickered to life with dull yellow bulbs set in the corners of every other landing.
“Which they do. Yay for us.”
“Yay.” Orlando began to give in to his frustration here, letting go of fear at last. “So, another question, if I may.”
“Do you have to?”
“Yes. When did you become such a jerk?”
More chuckling.
“I mean, when we met you — your custodian spirit form at least, you were this nice and gentle monk from a hidden cavern world, and now…”
She spun around, eyes wide. “I’m batshit crazy?”
“I was going to say, just kinda rude.”
She shrugged and continued dragging herself down the stairs. “Must be the merge with this mind. This poor woman… girl, who has been here most of her life. Driven mad by splitting her personality over and over, ramming some other consciousness into her. I could tell you insane stories. About spirits, untethered souls…”
“Ghosts?”
“One word for them. She was a willing receptacle for them. Her mind phased in just the right vibrational state, echoing with — oh never mind, you wouldn’t understand. Or care at this point. Just know, I feel her pain and she — well, her nature bleeds into mine.”
“Sarcasm and wit improving your dryness?”
“Maybe, kinda yeah.”
They continued descending, the air becoming thicker, more concentrated with dust and age. But somewhere there must have been a ventilation tunnel or a cave, as a light draft came from below.
He had to break the silence. “Umm, are we really in the future?”
“Shut up or I will become rude. We have to hurry.”
“Why?” He moved a little faster, catching up, but on the next pass noticed something on the masonry. What looked like fresh drops of blood. “I mean if we’re only going back to the past, we could stay here for a long time, days, weeks, and it wouldn’t matter once we returned to the same moment…”
She stopped, out of breath, head down. Then turned to him. Glared, but then looked down, and pulled her left hand away from her chest.
“Oh, shit.”
“Shit. Yes.” She sighed. “Ricochet, back there.”
A large patch of red, at first blending in with all her other gaudy decorative crayon self-art, but this just drenched her left side, under her breast.
“Future or not, this body will not last much longer. I am pushing it far beyond normal as it is.”
She kept descending. “Almost there, please hurry.”
“Hold on. Jesus, if you die…?”
“Yes?”
“Won’t that just release your inner Custodian?”
“Maybe, but I am considering another alternative.”
“Which is?”
The word came back, echoed over the last landing, and up the uncounted flights of stairs:
“Escape.”
They emerged into what looked like a grotto. Strange green lights emanated from cracks in the walls, almost like he imagined nuclear-tainted water would resemble. A concrete slab of a floor, flanked by nine pillars, in a circle around a throne-like structure.
I feel like I’m in a D&D game, having reached the dungeon’s final Boss-level chamber.
The injured woman staggered ahead, to the first of the smooth pillars. She motioned to the chair.
“Have a seat, you’ve earned it.”
Orlando studied the thing: all strange angles, carved out of the masonry itself, like it was part of the floor. “Don’t we need one of those tablet things?”
“Not with you. Visualize where you want to go. See your kids.”
He hesitated. This was it. Turned back to her.
“So… you’re really done after this?” He studied her closely, looking for anything behind those opaque eyes.
“Indeed. My part, too, is quite over. Time to hitch a ride with this poor soul.”
“And then what?”
She gave him a sly smile. “You’ve had a taste of the other side, peeked behind the curtain. You know as well as I.”
“Yeah well, I didn’t see no con man at the controls, no puppet master or movie projector or dude writing code. I don’t know what’s out there beyond all this.”
“But you know this isn’t it.”
And knowing is half the battle? Orlando choked on the surreal nonsense of the moment.
“So, it didn’t matter? What I was, what I became and what I did? Despite all that power, despite what you could do as a Custodian, an Agent? It didn’t matter? Not in the big scheme of things?”
She shrugged. Her life was fading, eyes fluttering. She sunk to her knees.
“It may not be all. Maybe we come back.”
“Ugh,” he said, heading to the chair. “Reincarnation? Got to do all this shit again?”
She coughed. “But that is the beauty of it all. Ignorance. Remember that.”
“It’s good to be stupid?”
“Garden… of… Eden…”
He perked up as he stood before the chair. Sensed a dull humming. “This sounds like something Caleb would be all over.”
“He’s not here, you are.” She coughed up blood into her palm and looked at in wonder. “Listen. One last thing to teach you.”
“What? You haven’t taught me shit. Just spoke in riddles and scared the crap out of me.”
“You’ll have a choice to make. You and Phoebe and the others.”
“Yeah. You said Phoebe had a destiny. Thought you were leaving me out.”
She shook her head. “No. You most of all.”
“Save the world?”
“Or change it forever. Your choice. You will make it soon.”
“I don’t understand.” He touched the chair. No vibrations, no shock.