Don’t do it, said the weaker one, fuzzing in and out of view as he spoke. Just keep yourself safe.
That’s Godfrey speaking, said the strong one. He knows there’s a chance I’ll be the only one to come through. Because of our twin connection. And that terrifies him. He’s stalling until he can sever our connection.
Zak laughed. Okay, fine. So neither of them made any sense. Whatever.
Zak, the weak one said, it’s simple: You know I’m your brother because I don’t want you to die.
SIXTY-SEVEN
Moira knew it was only a matter of time before they either succumbed to the junk in the air or wound up crushed under a collapsing section of ceiling or stumbled upon by a rescue crew. They had to move quickly.
She suspected something had gone wrong with Zak’s plan. The explosion that had rocked the building hadn’t seemed like a combustible explosion. It was more the impact of something fast and solid—say, a superway train—colliding with something strong and solid—say, a building. The electroleum hadn’t been detonated. Godfrey hadn’t gotten his way yet.
Which meant there was a chance Zak was still alive.
Which further meant that he might be hurt somewhere in the facility. Or—possibly worse—not hurt and trying to blow the whole place up in some different way.
She didn’t know anything about the chemical, physical, alchemical, and magical properties of electroleum, but she knew that the Dutchmen had seemed very confident that they could turn the stuff into an explosive. If it was easy enough for those dunderheads to do, then she figured Godfrey would have a pretty good shot at it, too.
They had to find Zak. Now.
Back in the corridor, she kept her eyes peeled for the wall that had crumbled—and a beam came falling through it. She jumped back, berating herself for her stupidity. That was the most significant damage they’d seen, so didn’t it make sense that the point of impact was nearby?
She wiped dust from her glasses and could see well enough in the gloom to perceive the hole in the wall. The fire burning in there made it more obvious. She hauled herself to her feet. The cloud of dust—and now smoke—was filling more and more of the hallway. She tugged the neckline of her shirt up over her nose as a makeshift breathing mask. It was better than nothing. Barely.
Khalid stood up, too, and after a second’s hesitation covered his face as she had done.
“In there?” he asked, pointing. “Toward the fire? Really?”
“Three Basketeers,” she said, hoping he could tell by her eyes that she was smiling.
“I hate myself for coming up with that,” he groaned, but followed her as she scaled a pile of wallboard and fallen ceiling joist into the next room.
SIXTY-EIGHT
Zak roared from the pit of his stomach as he pushed himself away from the electroleum and back on his feet. The stronger Tommy was shifting before his eyes, his colors bleeding and blending together, smearing into blue and red and gold.
And then, as the weaker Tommy faded from view entirely, Zak beheld only Godfrey.
This time, there was no crushing pain to distract him; he saw Godfrey clearly. He had long sandy-brown hair that was tied back in a ponytail, and he wore ragged blue pants, brown boots, a red kerchief tied around his forehead, and a loose, threadbare white shirt with a single brassy button among several dull brown ones.
And he was young. So young. Probably younger than Zak, something he’d never expected.
Just a kid. Still a kid. After all these centuries.
Do. It. Now, Godfrey said, and his eyes burned. They literally burned—tongues of flame licked out from them, and Zak took a step back for fear of being singed.
One of the control panels is still functional, Godfrey said. You can overload the recharging mechanism and detonate the electroleum in the tanks. You’ll finally get your wish, Zak: You won’t be alone anymore. You’ll be with Tommy. In the land of the dead. Where you both belong.
Zak shook his head. “No,” he said aloud. “Show me Tommy again. Let me see my brother.”
Your brother is dead, Zak. He’s been dead since his kidneys gave out at age two. I just found his spirit, lingering because of his connection to you. Good fortune on my part. Other spirits, they just vanish, depart, float away above the Secret Sea. But not Tommy. No. Pathetically clinging to the one thing he knew so well in the world: You. Trying to communicate. He would have moved on eventually, would have left the Secret Sea entirely, and all the physical universes. But I reinforced his connection. Kept him tethered to you. All so I could contact you. No one would help a random spirit lost in the world, but a twin … Oh, a twin would do anything to help his brother, wouldn’t he?
So, really, you owe me, Zak. Because of me, you had your brother’s voice in your ear for years. Now’s the time to pay me back. Bring me back to life, Zak.
“But it might not work! And Khalid said it could end up killing people back in my world.”
Do you think I care? Godfrey raged. Your world killed me! We could have saved the boat over here, but when we crossed over, we ran aground and I died! Do you have any idea what I’ve been through? What I’ve suffered? Imagine being trapped. In the dark. Forever.
You were a ghost. You could have just come up from underground.
I didn’t know which way was up! Picture yourself underground, suspended in the utter dark. And gravity doesn’t work on you because you have no mass. Any movement could be the wrong one. You could think you were going up but actually be going sideways. Or down. And you could end up drifting forever in the darkness, headed to the center of the earth.
That still doesn’t—
And then, without warning, Zak was plunged into darkness. And silence. There was only the sound of his own breath, and then even that died away, leaving him floating, insensate, deaf, blind.
(I am in darkness.)
(Darkness and quiet.)
(For so long.)
Three. Hundred. Years! Godfrey’s voice erupted in the core of Zak’s being, like a flare lit in darkest night. And yet still there was no light.
For three hundred years I suffered! Buried underground! Unable to hear or see. A ghost, anchored to the place where I died. Until …
(And then there is light.)
(And then there is loud.…)
The destruction of the twin towers. Liberating Godfrey from his tomb, allowing him to surface …
Centuries of isolation! Only myself! And then, in a thunderclap, I was free! Free! I emerged from under the ground into chaos, into a hell of falling steel, a fog of concrete dust, dead bodies littering the very air. Souls in flight, thousands of them, vanishing into the afterlife.
And I could not join them! I was trapped in the physical world, still bound there. I passed into my own world, then back into yours, but no one could perceive me. I was no longer in the dark, but I was just as alone. No one could help me.
All those deaths—they destroyed me. Brought me over. Made me do this to myself. Unaging. Preserved forever. Trapped underground for centuries.
No, their deaths liberated you. You cast the spell on yourself. You did that to yourself—they freed you. And look what you’ve done with your freedom!
I want my life back! I deserve it back! It was taken from me too early.
The boat. The waves. I lived and relived those moments over and over, a thousand, a million times in the centuries before I found your brother. I did nothing wrong! I was a servant boy on a ship, and the ship ran aground through no fault of mine! Why should I suffer such hell?
My spell to save my life had permanently bound me to the living world, even though I was no longer corporeal. I was a living ghost, unable to fully die, unable to live.
Can you imagine the torment? No, Zak, you can’t. You’re swimming in the black quiet right now, but you have my voice. And you’ve been there for only a minute or two. You cannot possibly contemplate the torture, the agony, the sheer hell of three hundred years, trapped in the dark. Only to emerge into the w
orld and find no help.
Until your brother. Until I found your brother and used him to bring you to my world, where things were different. Where wild science could provide a way back. A way out. It had to be you, Zak. No one else would do. I had to have a connection to the physical world and a way to force someone to do what I needed. Tommy was the only way to get both.
You’re going to kill people! Zak exclaimed. I know you want to come back to life, but you’re going to kill so many people when the walls between our worlds break.
Do you think I care? Do you think I care at all about your world? Your world killed me! Imprisoned me! I’ll drown the whole place in the Secret Sea if I can! I’ll flood every last acre of dry land and kill everyone on it if it means bringing me back to life. And even if it doesn’t, I’ll do it anyway! My revenge!
Revenge? Zak asked. On who? No one did anything to you. It’s all a bunch of mistakes and accidents. What’s the point?
My revenge on your whole world! Godfrey screamed. Your world wrecked my ship; your world imprisoned me. If your world dies so I can live, so be it!
It made sense and it made no sense. Zak didn’t know how much of it was true and how much of it was Godfrey’s speculation. Maybe Khalid’s friend Dr. Bookman could parse it; Zak couldn’t. One thing Zak knew for sure, though—there was no talking to Godfrey. No debating him. No persuading him. He’d been driven mad by his centuries of imprisonment, and nothing Zak could say or do would change his mind.
Tommy! Zak cried. Tommy, help me!
I dazzled you when you crossed over, pretending to be your dead twin, letting you think you’d seen Tommy. Your brother tried to get you to run away from the rift between worlds, tried to scare you away from the subway. I needed you to come over. For this. I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to get aggressive in order to overcome your brother’s meddling.
But Tommy can’t help you. No one can help you. Khalid has left you. Moira is powerless in this world. I’m possessing you, Zak. Like I did to that doctor. He forced me to, but the best part is that you just invited me in. Through your connection to your brother. I’ve been using it to communicate with you, and now I’m just pouring myself into you like water.
Downloading like a virus …
Zak screamed again and his eyes opened and he was standing elsewhere in the room, before a glass screen. His body was stiff and he could not move.
As he watched, his own hand—trembling and slow—raised from his side and moved toward the screen. Controls blinked there. The electroleum controls.
He’s in me. He’s using me.
Go away, Zak! Godfrey chortled. Back to the dark!
And then Zak was in the pitch black again, lost in the space under the World Trade Center. Or at least Godfrey’s memory of it.
How long was he there? He didn’t know. Couldn’t tell. He tried counting, but the darkness seemed to swallow his thoughts.
After three days of this, he would go insane. Never mind three centuries.
Panic burned through him. Would he be lost like this forever? When Godfrey blew up the electroleum facility, would Zak’s body be destroyed, his soul forever consigned to this place, this memory, this nothing?
That’s not going to happen.
Sound? Here? In the deadly silent?
And then, out of the endless black murk …
A touch.
* * *
Zak couldn’t understand where the touch came from or how he felt it. He had no body—he was an incorporeal spirit lost in a wash of infinite darkness. But he suddenly had a hand, and that hand touched another hand, the fingertips brushing against each other. It felt like touching a mirror—cool, smooth glass with the character of flesh and bone.
… zak …
So weak. The voice was so weak. Or maybe it was Zak who was too weak to hear. But he clung to Tommy’s voice, like a rope thrown into quicksand, and he walked his fingers up Tommy’s until their palms crossed and they gripped each other’s wrists.
How many years? How many years since he’d touched his twin? Tears came to Zak’s nonexistent eyes, and he focused on them, made them real.
He opened his eyes. He was at the control panel still, his fingers moving of their own accord along the surface.
Get back where you belong! Godfrey howled.
No!
And then, an echo: … no…!
Zak could see both his hands on the panel, moving under Godfrey’s control. At the same time, he could feel Tommy’s grip on his wrist, somewhere back in the deep black.
The two of you combined are still weaker than I am.
As Zak watched, his hands swiped and jabbed at the controls. A warning klaxon—a new one—sounded once, loudly, blasting like a foghorn with a bad attitude. And then, entirely unbidden, Zak’s head swiveled to the left, and he could only watch as one of the conduits into a tank decoupled itself. With a hiss and a mechanical whine, it retracted several inches.
Pure, raw electroleum spilled out of the tank, glowing with hot intensity.
Another conduit disconnected, this one higher up. More electroleum flowed down the side of the tank, pooling and spreading on the floor. Zak felt his lips turn up in a grin.
… now zak together …
Zak sank briefly back into the black. He and Tommy had both hands clasped together now. He still could not see, but out in the dark he heard his twin’s breath and—he imagined, or maybe not—his heartbeat.
Tommy’s strong heart. Zak’s repaired heart. They beat together in syncopation.
… push!
Zak grunted and shoved as hard he could, tightening his grip on Tommy, pushing with all his might and—
—Godfrey shouted in surprise
—Zak stumbled forward, out of the dark, back to the world
—Tommy cried out
—Godfrey
The air before Zak smeared blue and gold and red. He felt a long, tight, taut string stretched out from his chest, vibrating and pulling at his heart. Godfrey was expelled from him but still clinging to him.
“Get! Out! Of! Me!” Zak yelled. With each word, he felt—heard—an echo from Tommy.
And then, in a rush, the string snapped, and Godfrey hovered in the air before Zak, eyes still ablaze, and Zak—suddenly in control of his body again—stumbled backward and slipped and fell.
Into the widening pool of raw electroleum.
SIXTY-NINE
Khalid and Moira found themselves in a lab or a medical suite of some sort. There were wheeled cots and glass display cases that stood fissured or shattered against the walls. The fire burned in a puddle on the floor. A single sprinkler overhead sputtered and spit at it. Khalid scanned the ceiling and saw why the other sprinklers had failed—the collapsing ceiling joist had severed the pipe in two places, cutting off most of the water supply.
“Look,” Moira said in a hushed whisper, pointing at the puddle.
“I’ve seen fire before.”
“No. Look. It’s electroleum.”
Khalid squinted. Sure enough, the puddle had that familiar viscous ooze. There was another puddle merging with it, something from a broken bottle that lay nearby.
“The stuff doesn’t burn on its own.” Moira sounded satisfied and relieved at the same time. “Which is good. You have to combine it with something. I bet depending on what you add to it, it burns or explodes or—”
“I love a good science lesson as much as the next guy,” Khalid lied, “but maybe we should find Zak?”
Moira shook herself as if waking up. “Right. Over there.”
He followed where she was pointing. There was no way out of this room but the hole they’d come through, a door that went right back out into the corridor.…
And a hole in the ceiling. Of course. From the collapse.
They maneuvered two cots into position and chocked them with chunks of wall, then climbed up. Khalid went first, then reached down to haul Moira up.
It was darker and smokier up here, with fewer emergenc
y lights. But they didn’t need lights—a glow up ahead practically burned through the billowing clouds. They crawled along carefully, wary of more holes in the floor.
“We have to get to where the secure area is soon, right?” he asked Moira.
She was coughing again. Man, the air itself was charred in here! She shook her head and coughed and pointed.
Where the glow emanated, a wall teetered on the brink of collapse. Just before the wall was a massive tear in the floor, a ragged ring that stretched as far as they could see. Down below, a fire burned and crackled, along with the now-accustomed pale glow of electroleum. Khalid wriggled to the lip of the tear. The floor juddered beneath him, threatening to cave in. He froze, then felt Moira’s hands on his ankles. He looked over his shoulder. She was sitting up on a more secure part of the floor, clutching him tightly. “Go.” She jerked her head forward.
Khalid inched forward carefully. Moira could hold on as much as she wanted, but if the floor collapsed, his weight would drag them both down.
Peering into the hole in the floor, he could see under the wall ahead. There was a fire down there, and a wide, open expanse of floor. Rubble. A series of drums knocked akilter.
And Zak.
Zak was down there.
And he was glowing.…
SEVENTY
Zak tried to stand up, but the electroleum clung to him and made him slippery. He slipped and fell again, the stuff coating him, glowing. It smelled like ozone and burning metal and too-sweet sugar.
Around him, a wind began to whine in the room, gusting and blowing. The wind was gold and blue and red, and it was Godfrey, a banshee, a poltergeist. Maybe it was all the raw electroleum nearby. Maybe it was his anger. Maybe it was both. Whatever it was, Godfrey was beginning to affect the physical world. Zak held up his arms as papers and pens and other implements from the desks scattered around him got caught up in the wind and began to fly at him.