“Did he get through to Bloat?” Battle asked.
Ray shook his head. “The shield held. He was going to call someone on this” — he held up the walkie-talkie — “but I got it away from him in time.”
“Good work,” Battle said. He turned to the old man. “Which way to the tunnels leading to Ellis Island?” The old man drew himself up defiantly. “I’m not telling. And there’s no way you can make me.”
“You’re probably right,” Battle said. He looked at Puckett.
The ace lumbered forward, grabbed a fistful of the old man’s I SAW THE BIG BLOAT MOAT T-shirt, and yanked him up off his feet. He tossed him over the edge of the chasm, down screaming into the lava river below.
“Hey!” Danny said.
Battle turned his narrow gaze on her. “This is war, Corporal. Or do I have to remind you? We couldn’t leave him behind and let him alert Bloat and we couldn’t take him with us.”
“We could have knocked him out —”
“And taken the chance that he’d wake up at any time and betray us?” Battle shook his head. “I think not.”
“But —”
“Let’s go, Corporal Shepherd,” Battle said coldly.
“But —”
Ray stepped between them, facing Danny. He shook his head and she subsided when she saw the closed, set look on his face. “Not now,” he said quietly. He turned back to Battle. “I suppose you want me on point again?”
“Right you are, Agent Ray,” Battle said, cheerful again, a false twinkle in his cold, cold eyes.
“My ass,” Ray muttered to himself as he made his way carefully onto the naked rock span. He looked over the edge in the glowing, sputtering lava, and was glad that he wasn’t afraid of heights.
The Outcast materialized in Wyungare’s cell. First, a roaring, spitting fireball flared like an exploding sun on the back wall of the room, then the Outcast stepped through the aching white glare like a movie wizard.
“Great special effects, huh?” He grinned, and snapped his fingers. The nova shrunk to nothing and popped out of existence with a sound like a light bulb exploding. The Outcast brushed flecks of clinging radiance motes from his cloak to expire on the stone-flagged floor. “I always did love a good entrance.”
The Aborigine stared at him with wide, veined, coffee-brown eyes. The gaze was appraising, but whatever Wyungare was thinking was shut away behind the ebony shield of his mind. Wyungare said nothing. He just stared. The steady, critical gaze made the Outcast uncomfortable and the head-silence was perturbing. Suddenly it was very difficult to pretend nonchalance. Suddenly it was difficult to joke. His false humor fell from him like a cloak.
“You have to help me,” the Outcast admitted at last. His body sagged, the shoulders slumped and defeated.
“Mate, you look horrible.”
“I’m losing people out there.” A basso rumble shook dust from the ceilings and shivered the floor. A second concussion followed the first. “My head hurts. I’m being pulled apart.”
“I’m sorry.” Wyungare glanced up at the Outcast from the corner of his cell. His nut-brown skin was difficult to see in the gloom. All Teddy could see were the moist highlights of the eyes.
“You’re sorry? That’s it?”
“What do you want me to do? I don’t have your powers. That’s not how I can help you.”
Another explosion rumbled through the ground, vibrating underfoot. The Outcast heard a chorus of screams in his head, and he wanted to scream with them. Instead, he sobbed. The crying hit him hard — great, gulping gasps of it. He could no longer feel the staff in his hand, and through the tears he could no longer see the Outcast’s trim, muscular body. He was simply Teddy. Just Teddy. Just an overweight adolescent. “I’m wiped. I hurt and I’m tired and I can’t be tired. Not now. They’re screaming and dying and in pain and I can’t get rid of the voices.”
Wyungare had risen silently to his feet. Teddy felt the man’s hand on his shoulder, and then he was hugging Wyungare fiercely, clinging to him like a child to his father — no, for he’d never embraced his father in that way. Never.
Sniffing, Teddy pulled away. He wrapped the Outcast’s body back around him like a cloak as the noisy clamor of the Rox came back into his head. Kafka was calling him; the jumpers were in chaos; at the gates, the jokers were overmatched. “If you won’t help me, I have to go. I can’t stay.”
“You won’t let me help you.”
"When have you tried?”
“I’ve told you. You haven’t listened. You are the one with the power, why do you stay here and let them hurt you?”
“You and the penguin … Where am I supposed to go? Hawaii?”
“To the dreamtime. To the place that feeds you,” Wyungare answered.
Irritation flooded through Ted with that. “Yeah, great. Even if I could do that, then what have I accomplished? Damn it, this is our world too. Why should the nats be able to run us off just because we were unlucky enough to be infected by that damn virus? Why should we have to run away with our tails between our legs.” The image made him laugh sarcastically. “And some of us even have the tails to do that, don’t we? Listen, you can keep your damn advice, okay? I can beat these assholes. I don’t care if I have to pull every last fucking erg of energy from your precious dreamtime or break all the barriers between that world and this. I don’t care what leaks out or what happens. I’ll do it.”
“Always the hero,” Wyungare said softly.
“You’re damned right.” The Outcast took a deep breath. With it he pulled in power, feeling the energy course from the shadow world to Bloat’s body to him. With the power came the cacophony of the Rox — the pleading, the terror, the anger.
The sons of bitches — I’ll kill them! I’ll kill them all!
That fucking Snotman just tore the gates down…
Where the hell’s the governor? Where’s the demons? I need help…
“I have to leave,” the Outcast said. “Thanks for nothing.”
“You don’t have to be Bloat forever, you know. The way I see it, you have three choices.” Softly again. Quietly. The Outcast stared at him. “With the help of the others like me, you could sever the link. All of us together could do it. You could stay as you are right now — in that form, but without the power. You’d be a nat. Normal.”
The Outcast blinked. “Or… ?”
“Or we could move you fully into the dreamtime — the entire Rox. It would take all of us, each of us calling on the powers of our own portion of the dreamtime, but we could take the Rox and move it away from this shadow plane and take you to the source of your power.”
“Where you can deal with me on your terms? Where I can be handled? Where I wouldn’t be stealing power from your precious dreamtime — in either scenario: me as nat or me in the dreamtime?”
“All of that’s true,” Wyungare admitted. “And there’s another sacrifice to that. It’s going to take you, as well. You won’t be the Outcast in the dreamtime, or even Bloat.”
“What will I be?”
“You will be. That’s all.”
Teddy could read nothing in those mahogany eyes, nothing at all. He strained to hear Wyungare’s thoughts in the maelstrom of the Rox: silence.
“What’s the third alternative?”
“Don’t do anything. Stay here and let them bomb you to hell.”
Teddy snorted laughter. “I’ve already met one of your shamans; he tried to kill me. Why would Viracocha and the rest of your friends turn around and help me? The Rox and me seemed to be a threat to you just like I am to the nat world — why should I think you’re going to deal with me any differently?”