me, and everyone else, are the universe experiencing itself. So when you jump down there,' he gestured at a four-meter drop to a walkway below, 'remember that the atoms in that walkway and the atoms in your feet were made in the same vast stellar explosions billions of years ago. All part of the same thing.'
He grabbed her shoulders and spun her around, so that she was facing the ledge. 'You can do this, Elra. Any distinction between you and the world is false. You are the world, just as it is you.'
He pushed her, ushering her forward. She was standing on the very edge. 'We are atoms thinking of atoms, matter thinking of matter. Anything is possible – no – everything is possible; especially for you.'
She readied herself.
He leaned forward and whispered in her ear. 'You can achieve anything, because you are everything.'
He pushed her, gently, in the center of her back. She resisted.
'Oh, and don't forget to bend your legs when you land!'
Push. That was it, she was plummeting.
Twenty
Time seemed to slow as she fell. She became minutely aware of her inner sense of balance and the position of her limbs.
Her feet hit the ground and her legs bent at just the right time. She put out an arm to steady herself, and was left crouching, perfectly balanced, her fingers touching the floor and being intimately aware of its energy. Her energy.
And it didn't hurt one bit.
Kai silently dropped down next to her, beaming at her as if she were his newborn child. 'That was poetic,' he exclaimed.
Elra stood up, for the first time feeling like she understood her true potential. Her whole being was buzzing with energy, mainly from the adrenaline and the shock of actually having pulled it off.
'Time to run home,' Kai said. 'We can really let ourselves go down here, since no-one's going to see us.' He looked around and pointed towards a medium-sized tunnel in the far wall. 'Down there. Run down to the bottom and take that tunnel, you'll feel it slope downwards after a mile or so, because we'll be under the Thames. We'll reach a five-way intersection: turn left and just keep on going. I'll let you know when we're close.'
Elra was ready. She knew she was going to enjoy this.
Expertly, she jumped down the flight of stairs at the end of the gantry in one go, landing perfectly. Same with the next. There was a duct jutting out of one wall and running all the way to the bottom: she leaped onto it and ran down its length, maintaining perfect balance with ease. She took the tunnel Kai suggested, and found, to her delight, that the floor was made of a fine, coarse concrete, perfect for grip. She sprinted, feeling every footfall drive her forwards many meters, eating up the ground as if she was about to take off. That's what it felt like, she thought. Flying. It was just so easy.
A large pipe ran across the floor. She cleared it effortlessly.
The floor began to incline, and Elra only got faster. She didn't think about waiting for Kai: he'd be around. This was her time.
After another minute she came to the five-way intersection. The left turn was a large square tunnel, full of vents, steps, ducts and concrete platforms. Time seemed to dilate and her experience became the simple overcoming of obstacle after obstacle, one after the other, effortlessly. She heard the odd whoop of encouragement from Kai behind her, but he seemed distant and lagging.
Elra ran through the hidden ways under London, through tunnels, shafts and historic maintenance routes. Victorian brick gave way to wartime concrete, steel walkways ended in ancient stone passageways. Roman cisterns, disused Tube tunnels, worn bunkers, bricked sewers and ominous galleries flew by. Elra felt like the city, which she'd only just arrived in a few hours ago, was hers and hers alone.
Twenty-one
Elation. Elation and exhaustion. Oh, and hunger. Elra felt all three equally keenly.
They had come to a stop outside a rusty maintenance elevator in what looked like a disused wing of a prison: long, thin corridors lined with metal doors forked off a main walkway at regular intervals, each one disappearing into the darkness of the sub-terrain on either side. Elra leaned over, hands on her thighs, relishing the burning sensation in her muscles. Kai was sitting on the floor, massaging his calves.
‘You can run like the bloody wind,’ he declared.
‘This Knowledge stuff is really something,’ she chuckled, sitting down against the opposite wall, facing him.
‘You want to know the best bit?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Roll up your jeans.’
She did. Her mouth dropped.
The marks had been worn off by the accumulated action of sweat and friction. All that was left were streaky blotches of ink, indiscernible and formless.
‘They were a booster, something to get you going,’ Kai explained. ‘Sometimes the human mind requires a bit of kidding to help it realize its full potential. Like placebos. If you think you are capable of something, you become capable of it. You, of all people. So it was with the marks.’
‘But you said people require marks to –’
‘Not you, Elra. I told you, you’re unmarked. Yet you managed to open those rifts and, I presume, make that warrior’s blade disintegrate.’
This had been troubling her for some time. ‘I knew, deep down, that I somehow made it happen. But how did I make it happen?’
‘Well,’ he said casually, ‘you’re obviously an incredibly powerful individual, and your mind deals with stressful or intense moments by manifesting your power, however untrained and unchanneled it may be. Basically, you were able to make those things happen because you were under intense stress. Now, as we’ve just seen, with a little guidance you’ll be able to do those things at will, without marks.’
‘So the blade disintegrating…’
‘You really didn’t want the three of you to be cut in half, so some wild, flighty, idealist part of your subconscious thought if only, oh, if only it’d go away, and it did. Well, technically the metal must have sublimed or been transported elsewhere: you can’t ‘erase’ things from existence. Shame you couldn’t have done something similar – ‘
He caught himself before he said it, remembering the iron spike in Elra’s mother’s stomach nonetheless. ‘Anyway,’ he hurriedly continued, ‘cut a long story short, you’re capable of great things. You may even be the most powerful person on the planet.’
Elra had a momentary realization. It had been creeping up on her for hours, but now it hit her squarely across the face. While it was in part inspired by what Kai had just said, its actual source came from within, as if she’d known it since that time in the playground, all those years ago.
‘I could make rifts,’ she said, in a slightly distant voice. ‘I could learn to make rifts whenever I want.’
Kai raised his eyebrows. ‘I… suppose so,’ he finished, uncertainly.
‘I could go anywhere… literally anywhere.’
Her fantasies suddenly didn’t seem so fantastical after all. A million possibilities occurred to her in an instant. The feeling was overwhelming. ‘Ever fancied a trip to the Pyramids, Kai?’
His eyes widened. 'Well, we'll need to test the limits of your ability. There are always limits, otherwise – ' he hesitated, 'you would be godlike.'
She realized how uncomfortable he was looking.
'You know,' he continued, 'even the Wise can't use Knowledge without the relevant marks, let alone make rifts. Just remember... just remember you're human. Don't lose sight of that.'
He pulled himself to his aching feet and threw back the elevator's concertina grill. He returned to his normal, jovial tone of voice. 'Right, let's get up there. Time to face my mother and the others. Did I tell you about my mother? She is rather... conservative, if that's the right word.’
'How?'
'She great, in her own way,' he said, skirting the question. 'I'm sure you'll both get along. Eventually.'
Twenty-two
The elevator rose, passing grey and brown soil strata interspersed with the odd laye
r of concrete, piping, and cables mounted on metal plates. Kai seemed nervous: he drummed out a rhythm on his leg, humming under his breath. Soil gave way to stone, that gave way to dirty yellow brick. They seemed to rise for quite a while.
'How many people with Knowledge live in this hideout, again?' Elra asked.
'Four of us, full time,' Kai clarified. Perhaps a dozen or so more who pop in now and then. You'll see.'
His nervousness was rubbing off on her, as she was reminded just how little she knew about him.
The lift came to an abrupt stop. Kai pulled back the grill and swept his arm out in the style of a doorman. 'After you, ma'am.'
Elra exited. The light was bright and had a different quality up here. Sunlight? As her pupils adjusted, she found a large room with low ceilings, wooden floorboards and whitewashed brick walls. There was a bank of windows at its far end, and beyond... London. Seen from above.
Below her, on the right, was the Tower of London. She could see groups of tourists milling around on its waterfront, moving like ants. Beyond the stone crenellations, the glass towers of the City reflected the sun's glare. To her left: more glass and stone buildings, the Shard's majestic spire, and people walking down Bankside embankment, stopping and taking photos in front of HMS Belfast, a hulking battleship moored in the water. Directly in front of her, taking up the majority of her view, was the river Thames, snaking off into the far distance, spanned by bridges and crossed by countless red buses, cars and minuscule tourists.
It