HL 04-The Final Hour (21 page)

The needle went into me.

I thought I was ready for the pain. I wasn’t. With all the memory attacks I’d experienced, I thought I’d been through it before and could take it. But this was worse—much worse—than it had ever been. For what must have been a minute but seemed like days, I lay in thrashing contortions on the floor. I heard myself screaming in mindless agony.

Then—thank God—I felt as if I were plunging out of my own agonized body, plunging into a darkening whirlpool of time, and my own screams slowly faded away into ever-receding echoes.

Now, at last, the echoes faded too. I fell from the whirlpool into empty space. That’s what it seemed like, anyway. It seemed like I was dropping down and down and down through a vast empty space whose only limit was the past spread out beneath me. Moments of the past played themselves out far below as I tumbled toward them, watching. I caught glimpses of my whole life as it seemed to replay itself all in a single moment. There was me and Alex Hauser as little kids on a baseball field . . . Me as a miniature yellow belt in Sensei Mike’s karate class for children . . . Me at the dinner table with my mom and dad and my sister, Amy, rolling her eyes at some new horror-of-horrors that she’d experienced that day in school . . . Me and my friends clowning around at our lunch table in the cafeteria . . . Me with Beth . . . Me slipping into the car next to Waterman to hear what he wanted me to do . . . Me with Alex again, teenagers now, arguing in my mom’s car before he stormed off into the park where Mr. Sherman stabbed him to death . . . My trial for his murder . . . The Homelander compound . . .

There was so much time flashing before my eyes as I spun and tumbled down. At first, I couldn’t think. My mind was clouded with confusion. Where was I? Where was I going? What was happening to my body? Was that me I could still hear screaming in the far distance? Was I dying? Was this what the end looked like?

But then, I remembered . . . not the past . . . the present . . . the Great Death . . . New Year’s Eve . . . no time for fear and confusion. No time. No time.

I fought down my rising panic. I forced myself to focus. I had done this a million times before. In sparring matches. In belt tests. In fights with killers. I knew how to focus when I had to, and I had to now.

One memory. That’s what I needed. I needed to find one memory and fall into it. I focused my mind with all the energy I had . . .

There it was. I saw it below me. The compound. The barracks. The unconscious guard on the ground . . .

I guided my fall toward it.

If you’ve ever jumped off a really high diving board, you will know what it felt like then. That plunge where you think that any second you should hit the water, but the second passes and you’re still going down and down, and your stomach starts to rise inside you and then . . .

Then I was there. I had done it. I was in the compound. I was underneath the barracks window. The guard was unconscious beside me. Waylon was standing at the window above me. Prince’s voice was drifting out to me.

They are weary of war, but war is what we live for. They are afraid of death, but death is what we love
.

The guard stirred on the ground, waking.

Then Waylon moved away from the window. And I leapt up. I grabbed hold of the sill. I lifted myself. I looked in.

It was one of those weird double moments. I was in the past, but I was in the present too. I knew I was lying on the floor in the weird mansion screaming in agony. And I knew I was in the Homelander compound. I knew the guard was about to cry for help. I was about to be caught. But now—right now—there was this one moment—looking in the window . . .

Look!
I thought desperately.
Look!

I looked.

There was Sherman. Prince. Waylon. The table. The laptop.

The laptop.

Look, Charlie! What’s on the laptop?

“
I see it!
” I shouted. “
I see it, I see it!
”

Then, like an enormous, monstrous paw made of fire rising up from the bottom of the earth, breaking through the earth’s surface to grab me, pain—pain like nothing I had ever known before—wrapped itself around me, closed its flaming fingers tight.

“No!” I shouted.

I tried to fight it off, but it was no use. It was irresistible. It dragged me off the windowsill. It dragged me down and down, out of the compound, out of time, out of memory, down into an all-consuming agony like nothing else.

I have to tell them!
I thought.
Don’t let me die. Please. Not yet. Mike. Rose. I have to tell them what I saw!

It was the last sensible thought I had. After that, there was nothing—nothing at all—but falling and pain and blackness.

PART IV

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
All There Is

I saw a blue sky. The sun like a medallion. I felt myself floating upward into the light. For a weirdly peaceful moment, I actually thought I was dead and headed elsewhere.

Then the world contracted in a spasm of pain. I flinched, my eyes shut, my teeth gritted. No, I wasn’t dead. This hurt too much to be anything but life!

The gripping pain slowly passed. I opened my eyes.

I was lying on a four-poster bed in a room of high windows. The bed curtains had been pulled aside. So had the window curtains. The skyscape through the pane filled my vision. Then I turned away, looked around me.

I was in that bedroom again, the room where I’d talked to Beth. Heavy curtains, colorful rugs, knickknacks glittering everywhere, clocks ticking. Clocks . . . the light . . . It must be morning now . . . no, later. The sun was low but midway through its transit, as in a winter noon. I stared at a small domed clock sitting on one of the many end tables. After twelve . . .

I sat up fast. Too fast. For a moment, I was almost overcome by dizziness and nausea. I fought it off and pushed the bedcovers aside. I stumbled to my feet.

“It’s all right,” said a woman’s voice behind me.

Startled, I turned. There was Dr. Farber, sitting in a chair in the corner. A giant portrait hung above her of some rich guy in a three-piece suit. Beneath the picture, she looked small and fragile. Her sharp, crowlike face was gray, her eyes sunken. She was exhausted.

“You made it,” she said. “How do you feel?”

“Fine, but where . . . ?” I began, but another wave of dizziness went over me, and I sat down hard on the edge of the bed.

“They’re all downstairs,” Dr. Farber said quietly. “They’re getting ready.”

“Ready?”

“You slept the night and most of the morning, Charlie,” she said. “For a while there, I wasn’t sure you were going to come back at all.”

I tried to take it in. “All night . . . the morning . . . It must be . . .”

“It’s New Year’s Eve.”

“New Year’s . . .”

Urgency cleared my mind, washed my nausea and dizziness away in an instant. I was on my feet in a moment. I suddenly realized I was undressed, wearing nothing but underwear.

Reading my mind, Dr. Farber pointed to a gilded chair against the wall. There were clothes folded on it. “Those are clean.”

Jeans. A T-shirt. A sweatshirt. A baseball jacket. I pulled them on quickly.

Then I looked at Dr. Farber. She continued to gaze at me, weary but glad—glad to see me alive, I think.

“Do you remember what happened last night?” she asked me.

I thought about it. I did remember. The injection. The renewed memories.

I see it!

“Did I do it?” I asked her. “Did I remember anything useful?”

She nodded wearily. “You did it, Charlie. You remembered—and you told us about it.”

I shook my head. The night before was a blur.

“Rose and Mike,” said Dr. Farber. “They have it all. They know what they need to know.”

“Where . . . ?” I began.

“They’re in the kitchen,” Dr. Farber said.

Like everything else in the mansion, the kitchen was huge. There was a high ceiling with all kinds of brass and iron pots and utensils hanging from it. There was an enormous black stove and a big butcher-block table with an elaborate mosaic surface.

A TV was embedded among the tiles on one wall. It was playing the news. There were pictures of New York City. Enormous billboards. Video screens the size of houses. Lights flashing even in the daytime. I recognized the streets around Times Square.

“People are already beginning to gather for the big celebration tonight . . . ,” the newswoman said over the pictures.

Rose and Mike weren’t here, but Dodger Jim and Milton One sat at the table. They were eating rolls and eggs. Both had their eyes on the television when I walked in. Milton One was the first to turn to me. He lifted a roll.

“Good,” he said, his voice friendly and calm as always. “You’re in time for breakfast.”

“Where’s Mike?” I asked him.

“Have some eggs too,” said Dodger Jim, scraping some onto a plate for me.

“Where’s Rose?” I asked.

“Eat, Charlie,” said Dodger Jim. “You’re going to need it, believe me.”

“Organizers estimate there could be over three million people tonight in Times Square alone,” said the newswoman on the television.

I stared at the set, the pictures of smiling, laughing people bundled up for winter on the streets of New York. Snatches of conversation from the night before flashed in my sleep-fogged brain.

The whole point about Cylon Orange is its density. Six
canisters is enough to wipe out four city blocks
.

Four city blocks in New York City on New Year’s Eve . .
.

Could be a million people there. A million, at least
.

I turned to Milton One, now calmly holding out a plate with eggs and bread on it.

A million people, at least
.

“Where are they?” I said again. “Rose and Mike. Where are they?”

“Mike is in the gym, studying maps,” said Milton One. “Same as he’s been doing most of the night. Rose is upstairs in the big room, calling everyone he knows, trying to convince them the threat is real. Same as he’s been doing all night.”

“Patel’s outside getting the plane ready,” Dodger Jim added.

“The plane . . . ?”

“Eat, Charlie. I mean it,” said Milton One. “It’s going to be a long day. You won’t make it without food.”

“It’s New Year’s Eve,” I said desperately. I pointed at the television. “They’re already gathering in Times Square. We have to do something.”

“We will,” said Milton One in that same calm voice. “And the first thing we’re going to do is eat.”

I was frustrated, but I saw the sense of it. I grabbed the plate. Grabbed some silverware off the butcher block. Quickly, I shoveled eggs into my mouth, swallowing them without tasting them.

“Tell me what happened last night,” I said through a mouthful of food. “What did I see? What did I do?”

“You screamed like a banshee for one thing,” said Dodger Jim. He smirked as he said it. I had given him a couple of knocks awhile back during a fight we had. He didn’t seem too sorry that I had been in pain.