Kneeling, she checked her watch: dead, the hands stuck at nine and twelve. She thought of Gip. Her bad knee twitched. In inclement weather and with stress, acting as a vane or gauge, the restitched ligaments often tightened. Though this felt different, not stiffness or pain, but a strange, electrical tingling.
She stood, shook her leg out. Her knee was swollen to twice its normal size. Water retention usually came on over hours, if not days, and only after a workout. She hadn’t done much lately but sleep and sit and stand. Fluid seemed to be collecting at an abnormally drastic rate, and the joint pulsed, and despite the frigid air wasn’t cold at all, but oddly warm and soft, almost spongy — and it was inflating.
Her jeans stretched, split, the denim tore with a zippery sound and out the knee crowned. Pearl stumbled, the entire leg was numb, she had to hop. Finding the deck’s railing she leaned against it: the knee had gone hydrotic, big as a toddler’s head. Weakly Pearl called for help, her words slipped into the fog and were lost.
She waited. There was no pain. Instead the numbing fizzled into lightness. And the knee, a globelike bloom, began lifting, and behind it went her leg, unencumbered by will or gravity. The rest of her body followed: her right foot peeled from the deck, there was a weightlessness and ease to the whole thing. Pearl went limp, her worry drained into the fog. This must be a dream, she thought. She never dreamed, now she felt herself a tourist in her own subconscious. What to do but give herself over to its magic? And so she floated, her kneecap the puffed-up bladder of a hot air balloon, the rest of her body dangling beneath, out into the pillowy air over the common.
THE FIGURE IS CLOSE enough that on its face Calum can make out shadowy splotches of eyes, a nose, a mouth. Its clothes are white. And as it advances it draws a curtain upon the world — no, a curtain would be something. This is just oblivion: everything behind it is swept from existence. The bird, the pigeon or dove, swoops down from somewhere, the airy splash of its wings, looping up and circling above. Calum tries not to think of vultures. And still the figure approaches, sweeping with it that great wave of nothingness. It is a man, a brownskinned baldheaded man in white moving with brisk strides, and as he closes in Calum sees upon this man’s face, grim and dark as a ditch: a grin.
ONCE THE NOISES upstairs had calmed, Magurk raised his sword. Who’s got my back? He pointed the tip of the blade at Diamond-Wood. Recruit, you ready to earn your schnapps?
The aide glanced at the Mayor, who waved him away. My sword’s got a jones, screamed Magurk, blade in disembowelling position. Griggs, sighing, opened the portal from his console: no one waited there ready to pounce.
Magurk crept up the slope at a crouch, Diamond-Wood followed awkwardly on his crutches. A tense sort of hush poured down from above. The Mayor waited, listening. They’ve trashed the place, cried Magurk. My people, are you with me?
Griggs and Noodles exchanged a look.
We should probably get the radios back up, said Griggs, and Noodles nodded, and together they headed upstairs to join their brethren.
The Mayor eyed Favours in his wheelchair. Should we have a race or something?
Code 42, chuckled Favours, they’re here, at last!
From upstairs came moans of dismay, disgust, barks of rage from Magurk, the sound of the men moving room to room, surveying the damage.
So what next for your little boys’ club? said the Mayor.
His eyes widened — in anticipation, it seemed.
And the portal banged closed.
Favours squealed.
From the hallway that led to the other chambers came a whooshing, fluttering sound. Out of the darkness flew a bird. It circled the room — the Mayor ducked — and returned down the hall. From the shadows came a patter of footsteps and in the next chamber the man hollered, Lark! My liberationeers have arrived!
In a rush of black six hooded figures spilled into the conference room. Before the Mayor could cry for help, hands were upon her, a strip of ducktape was slapped across her mouth. Favours was spun around in his wheelchair, the old man clapped and hooted in delight, and then he was shuttled off into the Chambers.
The Mayor found herself wheeled past barred cells and bunkrooms, down a ramp into an unlit corridor. Favours’ whoops faded as he was swerved along another passageway. The abductors piloted her in silence, eerily purposeful, careering around a corner — a flash of light from some hatch above, they were entering a stormdrain. Things went dark again. The air warmed, infused with a mustardy, sulphurous smell. .
The floor degenerated from concrete to gravel, juddering through the cart and rattling the Mayor’s teeth, she held on for dear life. My legs, she screamed, make sure you don’t lose my legs — but beneath the gag her words sounded submerged. On they went, hairpinning into a passageway that angled up toward streetlevel.
Some light splashed weakly from the end of this tunneclass="underline" in it the Mayor tried to get a sense of who her kidnappers were. But their faces were mysteries inside their hoods. They drove her headlong up toward the watery brightness — a glimpse of the surface in some distant corner, who knew where, of her city.
THE FIGURE STRETCHES from the tips of his fingers to the heel of his palm and suddenly Calum is outside it all. He has a bird’s-eye view. From high above Calum sees himself upon the bridge and sends frantic thoughts to this person who is some version of himself to run, but the body is frozen, leaning against the railing, staring at this person, whoever it might be, barrelling over the bridge and inhaling the visible world with him.
That purple-lipped grin shadows the lower half of its brown face, the grin of some sinister and weird anticipation. Here are the eyes, dark and glittering. The baldhead sings with a dull sheen. The legs move in great strides but the upper body is motionless, almost rigid, the man less runs toward the Calum on the bridge than glides.
And this Calum is up against the railing, on this bridge from nowhere to nowhere, with even that nowhere becoming some farther and deeper sort of nowhere, and the man closing in of course must be a dream, the whole thing must be a dream. The skybound Calum watches himself look over the railing: hundreds of feet below, a swath of gauze.
The figure is big and close, hovering, and overhead Calum as a bird traces looping circles against the shrinking sky, and where will he go when there is no sky left. A vast negative halo surrounds this approaching figure. It brings nothingness into Calum’s dream — but then Calum thinks no, this is not his dream, it couldn’t be his dream. Calum has invaded someone else’s dream and now that person is coming to banish him from it.
From above Calum watches himself watching — the figure is almost upon him, moving swift and slick, no sounds of footsteps, no sounds at all, just those blazing black eyes and monstrous joyous grin, legs stabbing in front and sweeping away behind him, and this man is big, he is so big, and he is reaching for Calum with long thin brown fingers, and the fingers seem to be growing, stretching into tentacles twisted through with veins.
Things start to swirl and twist and eddy and Calum, soaring, can imagine this man’s hot breath on his own face, those fingers lace snakelike around his wrists, almost gently, and he feels his knees go weak — but then with a last desperate surge of strength Calum watches himself tear free, climb up onto the railing, and launch himself off the bridge.