Across the Universe (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

              I run out of the clearing and into the forest, plunging into the darkness that permeates the trees. Branches whip at my skin, slicing into my flesh; I stumble over rocks and plants as I scream Noah’s name. There is no answer but for the chirping of crickets and my own ragged breaths.

              Pushing through the thicket, I emerge from the opposite end of the woods. The plateau of jagged boulders greets me, the craggy structures jutting up toward the sky like misshapen daggers. Making my way over to the cliff’s edge, I dangle my toes over the precipice and watch as clumps of mud tumble down and shatter into dust against the ground below.

              “Noah,” I say, but this time my voice is barely above a whisper. Left with no other option, I begin to transform, the tips of my fingers turning to mist until I’m up to my elbows in smoke—

              “Who’s there?”

              I turn abruptly from smoke back into solid as the words echo out into the night. Spinning around and squinting into the night, shadows flicker against a boulder in the distance. Noah appears from out of a crevice, his face streaked in dirt and his hands shaking as he makes his way over to me.

              Rushing up to greet him, I throw my arms around his neck and pull him in close. He smells of sweat and earth, and his whole body quakes beneath my hands. His skin is cold from the chilled air of night.

              “I thought you’d gone,” I say, the statement muffled as my mouth presses against the curve of his neck.

              “I’ve been waiting for you to come back to me,” he replies. “I’d almost given up hope when I heard someone call my name. How’d you get away from Dante?”

              “That’s not important right now. We’ve got to leave this place and hide you somewhere safe. Maybe I can find another planet where you can survive, many galaxies away from this one. A place she can never find us.”

              “Who’s
she
?”

              I tell him of Elli and her betrayal. The words rush out like river water surging around bedrock. When I’m done reliving the whole, sordid tale, I step back and wrap my arms around myself. Not until now did the full weight of Elli’s treachery hit me. The force of it quickens my pulse and sets my head spinning.

              “There’s no right path to take,” I conclude. “She’s up there right now, tearing through The House. She’ll kill every last member whether I bring you there or not. The only chance we have to survive is to hide. The longer we keep the Key from her grasp, the longer it takes for her to destroy everything The House stands for.”

              “So let me get this straight,” Noah says. “Option one is to stay on Earth—spend the rest of our lives running and hiding. Option two involves you taking me to The House and handing me over to Elli so she can unlock some mystical power and use it to create universes that she can rule over. And option three—”

              “There is no option three. We stay here or we surrender. That’s it.”

              Noah shakes his head. “We have another choice. You take me to The House and instead of giving me to Elli, we fight. We do everything in our power to keep her from achieving her goal.”

              “No. I can’t bring you into harm’s way. I’ve already done enough to ruin your life,” I say.

              Noah throws his arms up in exasperation. “Don’t you see that staying here is pointless? We’ll only be delaying the inevitable. Eventually she’ll get bored up there and decide to screw the prophecy. She’ll come to Earth and take me herself. If we take a stand now, at least we have a fighting chance. At least we’ll be doing more than waiting around for the end to come.”

              I lean against a boulder and cradle my head in my hands. “So what do you suggest? We storm The House, find Elli, and—what then? We kill her?” I lift my gaze to meet his, my eyes growing watery. “I don’t think I can do that, Noah. Even after all that she’s done, she was my friend once. She treated me better than anyone else in The House. I have to believe that person’s still in there somewhere. That it’s just the billions of years being stuck in the Archives Room that have driven her mad.”

              Noah wraps his hands around mine, tugging me away from the boulder and into his embrace. “We can hope it won’t come to that. There has to be another way. Maybe we can hide the mystical energy the same way The House originally hid the Key. We’ll pick a universe and bury it so deep in the galaxies that Elli will never find it, no matter how many prophecies or books she reads.”

              “What you’re suggesting requires us to unlock the Hall of Beginnings, which is exactly what Elli wants us to do in the first place. We’d be playing right into her hands.”

              “Not if we get to the mystical energy source first. I’ll do whatever it takes, Amara. I believe that together, we can do anything. We can win.”

              I raise an eyebrow. “Nim will hate this idea. As soon as we show up she’ll try to dissuade us. And she could very possibly be right. To get past Elli and her Harbingers—to reach the Hall of Beginnings, find the mystical power, and hide it before she can do to us what she did to Dante—it’s very unlikely we’ll succeed. We don’t even know how to fit the Key—you—into the lock.”

              “Stop doubting yourself,” Noah says. “I’ve seen what you’re capable of. What
we’re
capable of. We’ll succeed because we have to. All the universes depend on it.”

              I sigh and rest my head on his chest, listening to the steady thump of his heart. He strokes my hair with one hand, and his touch sends sparks of warmth through my veins. Despite my unease, I begin to believe what he said. Maybe there’s a chance we can undo Elli’s destruction after all. Perhaps it’s just a matter of standing up and playing the heroes. She’s one person weak, and we’re two people strong.

              I feel foolish now for not listening to Noah from the beginning. In The House my predicament felt like one big gray area—any road I walked down would end up as a half win, half loss—but once Noah reasoned with me, everything turned black and white. The future is simple: we fight, or we don’t. We win, or we lose. Trying is better than doing nothing at all.

              My cheeks warm to a rosy shade of scarlet as I realize how much Noah’s comfort means to me. “I love you,” I whisper, the words feeling foreign on my lips. “I’m
in
love with you. It terrifies me and excites me all at once.”

              “I’m in love with you, too,” he says, and then he kisses me.

His mouth is soft against mine at first, but then it becomes more insistent. He presses into me, and I into him. My shoulder blades lean into the boulder behind us as I let him take me over. With him wrapped around me there is no House, no Elli, no life or death decision. There is only him and me, together forever.

I pull away, inhaling sharply and setting my hands gently against his chest. I have to wait several moments for my head to clear before I can speak again. “Not now,” I say. “After we defeat Elli. After we win. If I let you kiss me now, I’ll get lost in you, and by the time we’re done there will be no House left to save.”

Noah clears his throat and nods. “I’m ready, then. Let’s go.”

I step over to a clear patch of ground, tipping my head back to stare up at the stars. Noah joins me, slipping his hand into mine. He’s shaking again, but this time it isn’t from the cold but from anticipation. I can sense it rolling off him in waves.

“Are you ready to see the world for what it really is?” I ask him.

“Will it be anything like the pictures I see? The ones astronauts take from space?” he wonders aloud.

I smile. “It’ll be so much bigger. And brighter, too. It’s scary and extraordinary all at once.”

He takes a deep breath, stills his trembling limbs, and looks at me with a resolve I haven’t seen before. “I’m ready.”

I tighten my grip on his hand and focus on the transformation, letting my skin turn from solid into smoke. Noah’s blue mist weaves around my gray as we morph from the top of our heads to the tip of our toes into swirling clouds under the moonlit sky. Then I lead him up, up into the blackness of night, through the atmosphere and beyond.

Noah’s smoke form radiates with exhilaration as we rocket through galaxies and in between planets. We do loops around stars and curl around comets. I know we need to reach The House soon, but I can’t deny him the pleasure of exploring a universe he may never see again. If Elli proves victorious over us, it will all be turned to ash.

As I swirl around him, leading him through dazzling swaths of color streaked across solar systems and around the deep nothingness of black holes, I realize I’ve been taking the beauty of my universe for granted. I travel straight from The House to Earth and back every time, never really stopping to drink in the magnificence around me. This world we swim through came out of oblivion to make life. From its depths, Noah was born. My flight through this great expanse isn’t just a universe; it’s his origin story. For that, I owe the world reverence.

Regretfully, I push Noah away from the swirling planets below and think of home. When our smoke forms coalesce into solidity again, we stand in the Watch Room. Noah still clutches my hand in his, but when he sees Nim propped against the door he stumbles back and releases me.

“It’s just Nim,” I reassure him, though the sight of her frightens even me. Her skin has gone a sickly shade of green and the piece of fabric I wrapped around her leg is soaked in silver. Her head lolls against her shoulder and her eyes are shut. When I speak her lids flutter open, and her expression immediately turns outraged.

“I told you not to return,” she hisses at me. “And what is the boy doing with you?”

“We can’t run,” I reply. “Noah and I decided to come back and take a stand against Elli. The House is worth fighting for.”

“N—ni—nice to meet you,” Noah stammers, giving Nim a half wave. She narrows her eyes and opens her mouth to yell, but I cut her off.

“There’s nothing you can do to change my mind. Noah’s going to help me reach the Hall of Beginnings, and together we’ll find the mystical power source that runs The House. I’ll keep it away from Elli and hide it somewhere she can never find it.”

“Reckless,” Nim says, “but not stupid. Though I’d vastly prefer it if you were far from here.”

A stretch of silence envelops us, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It’s the type of quiet that is too thick—almost as thick as the void—and it sets my ears ringing.

“What’s going on out there?” I ask my mentor. “Have you heard anything lately?”

Nim’s face darkens. “There were screams. Lots of them. They lasted for quite a while. Then they tapered out. I haven’t heard so much as a peep for a while. But there
is
this.” She leans a hand behind her, setting it in a pool of shadow leaking in from under the door. When she brings her palm up to show us, it’s soaked in silver blood.

I rush to Nim’s side and lean down to inspect the floor. The blood isn’t hers. It’s trickling in from underneath the crack, soaking the dress I stuffed there and creating a puddle behind Nim’s back. My skin prickles with fear from the sight. No person could survive that much blood loss, not even a member of The House.

“Who’s it coming from?” I ask.

“I don’t want to know,” Nim answers. “It could be more than one. You won’t find out until you go out there.”

I grab onto one side of the basin propped against the door and call to Noah. “Some help, please.”

He’s been gazing around the room, taking in the marble floors and the stars projecting onto the walls from my orb that rests in its clear bowl. When he hears me he snaps out of his reverie and comes to help, dragging the blockade away from the exit. Next we each duck under Nim’s arms and pull her out of the way. She gasps in pain when she tries to put weight on her injured leg.

“I want to come with you,” she says. “You shouldn’t be alone.”

I grab onto Noah’s hand and give her my best reassuring smile. “I’m not. You stay here, where it’s safe. When we’re gone, crawl back over to the door and hold it shut again.”

Noah and I walk over to the exit. Placing my hand on the knob, I give him one last lingering glance. “Are you sure about this?” I ask him.

He sets his jaw, squeezes my hand, and nods.

“Be careful,” Nim says. “And Amara?”

“Yes, Nim?”

I’m expecting her to utter a trademark piece of wisdom, but instead her breath catches. Tears form in the corners of her eyes, and she struggles to keep them contained. “You’re everything I taught you to be and more.”

I blush, sensing the heat radiate over my ears and down my neck. There are no words to convey what I feel for her in the moment and so instead I just nod, avert my eyes, and pull open the door.

As Noah and I step across the threshold and into the hall, Nim’s stifled sobs follow me, not departing until I close the door behind me and focus on the perilous mission ahead.

Chapter Twenty-Five

              The halls are bathed in silver blood. It streaks the walls and drips into puddles on the floor. A hill of bodies covers the ground, a tangle of arms and legs and blank stares. The dead are people I recognize—House members I used to pass every day in the halls. Some of them sport gouged wounds; others look sickly like Dena and Oman did as their universes fell to destruction.

              With a chill that rocks my spine, I remember the illustration drawn on one of the ripped out pages shoved under my bedroom door. This scene matches it perfectly; the only aspect missing is the shadowy figure clutching the orb.

              I turn into Noah’s chest and stifle a scream as I bury my face in the fabric of his sweater. He gulps hard, his legs shaking beneath him.

              “Did Elli do all this?” he asks.

              “She must have,” I reply. “Her and her Harbingers.”

              “But why? Why would she murder them all in cold blood?”

              “Because I didn’t do as she asked. Because she wants to rule over The House alone, with no one to question her authority. Because she’s an evil, conniving bi—”

              “I wonder where she is now. She knows you have to come out of the Watch Room eventually, so she should be waiting here for us, but she’s not.”

              I stare out at the empty eyes and twisted bodies of the dead. “We have to get to the universes. If we can save them before the Harbingers can destroy them, then any surviving Watchers connected to them will be spared.”

              “Look in front of you, Amara. Listen to how quiet it is. There’s no one left alive but us and Nim.”

              “We have to try,” I say.

              There’s only one way to the Storage Room from here, and that’s over the mountain of bodies. Walking over to the pile of corpses, I grab the topmost one under the arms and try to disentangle it from the mob. My breath comes in wet, staggered gasps as I bite back tears. Noah approaches me and sets a hand on my shoulder.

              “This won’t do any good. We need to focus on the reason we came here,” he says.

              I ignore him, tugging at arms and legs until the corpse falls free and lands with a thud in front of me. I drag it backward, over to the side of the hall. Every step I take is slow and labored under the shock that starts to take over my body.

              Noah stops me, grabbing my shoulders and spinning me to face him. He shakes me hard until I look him in the eyes. “There’s no one left, Amara. They’re all dead. I’m sorry.”

              I steady my gaze on him, watching the molten silver of my irises harden in the reflection cast in his pupils. “We have to try,” I repeat, my voice no louder than a whisper.

              “Okay,” Noah gives in. “Okay. I’ll help you.”

              We go to work untangling the hill of dead House members. Each one we wrench free is dragged to the right side of the hall to lie next to another. Noah chokes back vomit as we reach the bottom of the crowd, the stench of flesh growing strong in our nostrils. Once we’re done we step across the corridor and make our way to the Storage Room.

              We move forth on quiet feet, hugging the walls and sneaking glances around corners before turning. I feel like a rat caught in an endless maze, waiting to come upon a trap. None appears. Instead more bodies meet us, strewn out in patches along the halls.

              Finally we reach the room with the drawers. With a shaking hand I turn the knob. Noah stands to the side, tensing his muscles in preparation to pounce. When the door falls open, however, we find the chamber empty.

              Drawers hang open at odd angles. Their marble faces are cracked and crumbling. Orbs are scattered across the floor, rolling into one another with hollow clacking noises. The edge of the door hits one of the crystal balls and sends it spinning along the ground; it doesn’t stop until it meets the edge of a silver puddle. I follow the blood trail with my eyes and come to meet the blank gaze of a dead Watcher, propped against the wall with his mouth open in a silent scream. A long gash is cut into his flesh, right above his heart, and I cover my mouth to keep from crying out.

              Bending down, I pick up one of the orbs. The universe inside casts a red glow on my palm as the world within implodes. A tear slips down my cheek.

              “Are they supposed to look like this?” Noah asks, picking up another crystal ball and rotating it in his hand.

              “No,” I say. “They’re being destroyed. The Harbingers already got to them. Soon they’ll be obliterated and a new universe will be born inside the orb in the old one’s place.”

              Noah casts his wary eyes across the plethora of glass balls that cover the floor of the chamber. “I don’t see any surviving worlds.”

              Carefully, I step over the debris littering the ground and approach the drawers. Only one drawer in the far right corner remains sealed. It’s hard to notice; the face rests at the edge of the very top row and is cloaked in shadows.

              “Nim’s drawer hasn’t been opened,” I say. “My key won’t unlock it, though. We’ll have to leave it and hope the Harbingers don’t come back.”

              “What about your universe? The one that holds Earth?”

              “It’s back in the Watch Room, safe—at least for now. But the rest of the Watchers—the ones that cared for these universes—they’re all dead.”

              “What happens to the new universes? The ones that replace the old worlds?”

              “I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “Before all this, it meant a new member of The House would come into being and take over the duties as Watcher. But now … I’m not sure what happens now. Elli’s undone the balance of things. For all I know, another House member may never come into existence again.”

              Noah grits his jaw and clenches his hands into fists. “We’ve got to stop her.”

              A rustling interrupts our conversation. The sound comes from the direction of the door and we both spin, our eyes coming to rest on a black-cloaked Harbinger. The entity glides through the door, the wake it makes causing the orbs beneath it to jostle into each other with the sound of clinking glass.

              I step in front of Noah instinctively, using one arm to push him back against the drawers. His weight knocks loose one of the crumbling faces and it shatters across the ground, leaving shards at my feet. I bend down, pick one up, and rush the Harbinger with a war cry.

              The depths of the figure’s hood glow red as it lifts a skeletal finger to point at me. I push through the wave of crippling fatigue that hits me and plunge the makeshift weapon into the cloak. A guttural howl fills the room as the fragment of marble slices into the Harbinger’s sinew. When I pull away a large tear in the fabric reveals a patch of oily black skin mixed with slippery red muscle. Black ooze seeps from a large wound in its abdomen.

              The red glow emanating from under the hood flickers and dies, but the Harbinger still glides toward me. Its movement is weak and stilted, and I make the mistake of dropping my defenses in light of its injury. The entity uses the window to attack, clawing at me with its gnarled fingers. I fall to the ground with the Harbinger atop me, black ooze dripping onto my face and neck as I struggle against the assault.

              Noah bends down and picks up one of the drawer faces, bringing it down so that the flat side smashes the Harbinger’s head. The figure rolls off of me and falls motionless to the ground as Noah brings the marble slab down again and again, cracking its skull and soaking its hood through with blood and brain matter. He doesn’t stop until I reach out and stay his hand.

              “It’s dead,” I tell him, trying to keep my tone soothing as I stagger back to my feet.

              Noah looks at me with wild eyes and then drops the drawer face to the ground. His cheeks are spattered with black goo and his expression is full of rage. I want to draw him into me—comfort him—but shadows flickering across the doorway interrupt me. Three more Harbingers block our path out into the halls.

              I grab Noah’s hand and turn us into smoke. We swirl around one another and shoot over the gap above the Harbingers’ heads, clinging to the ceiling and rushing down the corridor. We round corners and pass doors, all the while evading the plumes of black smoke that shoot up behind us. The Harbingers give chase all the way to our destination: the locked door across from the Archives Room.

              We turn the last corner and I flatten Noah’s cloud form against the marble wall when I see who stands there. Elli waits in the center of the corridor, blocking the entrance to the Hall of Beginnings. I try to filter our smoke up and out of sight but it’s too late; Elli catches sight of me and sneers with a malevolence that flips my gut over.

              The Harbingers close in behind us. There is nowhere to go but down, underneath the crack in the Archives Room door. Our cloud forms swirl into the chamber on the other side, flying over the desk stacked with parchment and into one of the tunnels beyond. The sound of a door slamming open after us causes me to lose focus and we tumble out of the air, hitting the ground as solid bodies.

              “Run,” I tell Noah as I jump to my feet and offer him a helping hand. He uses my arm as leverage to leap up, dashing down the hall after me as I lead us into the depths of the tunnel. Shelves full of books are blurs of timeworn colors as we sprint past.

              “I know you’re in here,” Elli’s voice echoes out in a singsong tone. “You can’t escape me that easily.”

              “Down here,” I command Noah, darting around a corner into a familiar corridor. I’m halfway past the rows of volumes within before I remember why I recognize the path: it’s the same one Elli took me down to find the secret room full of hidden books containing information on the Key.

              “You’re running from nothing,” Elli shouts, though she’s still not close enough for me to put a face to the words. “Eventually I’ll find you. That’s what billions of years in a place like this results in. I know The House better than anyone else here. Not that I left more than you and Nim alive, that is.”

              Noah drags behind me, his breath coming in panting gasps. I know he can’t run much farther, so I grab onto the collar of his shirt and yank him around one more corner. My fingers fumble across the spines of books as I search for the one I’m looking for.

              “You came back here, just like the prophecy said you would,” Elli continues. “Now I’ll take the Key from you and use it to unlock the ultimate power. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

             
There
. I find the dusty crimson volume and yank it diagonally from the shelf. The wall slides to the side in response. Instead of darting inside I skirt around it, and Noah follows me around the opposite corner. Peeking around the turn in the tunnel and holding my breath, I watch as Elli enters the passageway. Her hair is wild and her skin is stained with silver. There’s nothing left in her appearance of the friend I once knew. She sees the opening in the wall and smirks.

              “I know you’re in there,” she says, and turns into the secret room.

              I dart around the corner and reach for the shelf, slamming the crimson bound book back into place. The wall slides closed behind Elli, and the last thing I see is her crazy glare as the shelf slips back into place.

              “Come on,” I order Noah. “I bought us a few seconds, but she’ll get out soon.”

              Noah sprints over to me and we run down the tunnel. As we go I clench my hand around his and we are smoke again, darting past a cloud of Harbingers as we careen back out of the passageway and under the door of the Archives Room. We don’t solidify until we’re in the halls of The House, coming to stand in front of the locked door across the hall.

              “This is our only chance,” I say. “We have to unlock the door now, or they’ll be here before we can get away.”

              “I don’t know how,” Noah whines. His brow is covered in sweat and he strains to focus on the door in front of us. Setting a comforting hand on his forearm, I answer him in the calmest tone I’m capable of.

              “Focus on the lock. Will it to open. Maybe it’ll work. Just keep trying.”

              The hall falls silent as Noah stares at the keyhole below the knob. Several beats go by and I am convinced all is lost—that we were fools to try to open what we don’t understand—but then a click reverberates through the air and the hinges creak open.

              I stare up at Noah in wonder. His skin glows faintly with the same colored lights that filter out from underneath the door in front of us. I grab his hand, giving him a look of conviction, and pull him across the threshold into the unknown.