Shadow Train (18 page)

“Excellent,” Orias said when Rick hung up. He reached into the inside pocket of his overcoat and pulled out a small scroll. The parchment looked like it was made of black leather, and the sticks used to roll it up looked like the bones of a small animal. “Now, while I'm keeping Mrs. Anderson busy, you're going down to the basement—with this,” he continued, handing the scroll to Rick. “When you get to the bottom of the stairs—I mean the very bottom, and it's quite a long way down—ask whoever you see there to find Dr. Uphir. When he comes to you, give him the scroll. But don't open it. I'm warning you, Rick. If you break the seal you're risking your life—and mine. You understand?”

“Uh, no,” Rick said truthfully. “You're saying the Andersons have a doctor living in their basement?”

Orias's features remained impassive. “It's not a just a basement,” he said. “Now come along. Your dad wants you back in time for his wedding, so we'll have to hurry.”

Rick was starting to get it. This was no ordinary errand. It was a
business trip
in the same way that Orias fixing his arm had been a
medical treatment
—which meant it was probably going to be a freak show. The prospect filled Rick with a pins-and-needles feeling of giddy fear, but there was something else he was worried about, too.

“Wait. You said I'll be gone a few days?” he asked.

“Probably. If it takes that long.”

“Then I need to take my friend with me. Bran.”

Orias looked at him, his eyes narrowing slightly. “That wasn't part of the deal.”

“I can't leave him here alone,” Rick said. “Not for days—not right now. He might—uh, he's kinda going through a rough time.”

“I see.” Orias moved closer to Rick, keeping his voice low. “So there was a witness.”

Rick backed away. “What do you mean? Witness to what?”

“Don't try to play a player, my friend,” Orias said. “You're the one who messed up that Flats kid. When I read about it in the paper I knew it was you. Rick . . . I know what you are, which makes you perfect for this job. I think you might even enjoy it.”

“Well, I don't know what you think you know—” Rick began, but Orias raised a hand, silencing him.

“Never mind. It doesn't matter. You can take your friend along. But understand this. He's not like you. He will be in great danger where you're going. There's a good chance he won't make it back.”

Rick nodded. “Yeah, whatever,” he said, taking out his cell phone again. It would be a shame to lose his closest ally during whatever crazy mission this was. But at the same time, it might be a good idea to put someone between him and whatever was at the bottom of those basement stairs. And if Bran didn't make it back, Rick wouldn't have to worry about him running his mouth anymore.

Bran picked up on the first ring. “Hey, man,” Rick told him, “I need your help with something. Meet me in front of Maggie's house, ASAP.”

* * *

Aimee looked around the room that had been her refuge, after her mom disappeared and she'd realized how difficult it was to get along with her dad and her brother without Emily Banfield running interference. With a flop, she laid down on the bed and tried to settle down but found it impossible. She couldn't believe her father was actually going to marry that woman from the Flats and that somehow, he'd managed to have her mother declared dead less than two years after her disappearance.

She missed her mom so much, and she needed her. Her father was selfish, cold, and calculating and Rick was turning into the ultimate bully—or something worse. With her mother gone, there was no gentleness, no sweetness in Aimee's life, except what she got from Orias.

But there had been, once. There had been someone . . . someone she cared about, who loved her as much as (or maybe even more than) Orias did. Every now and then she got a quick mind flash of the happiness she'd found with that person, whoever it was, but then it would vanish as quickly as it had come, like a cork bobbing on a fishing line and then dipping under water before she could see what she had caught. Sometimes it seemed her mind had broken and had somehow become fragmented, like the crystal ring that had been so important to Orias.

A nostalgic longing Aimee didn't understand abruptly awakened in her. She somehow knew that if she could remember the person who had once made her so happy, the fragments would join together. The missing pieces would fall into place and everything would be clear and good again.

Suddenly she felt suffocated. She wanted to get out of there and, surprisingly, she wanted to be with her friends, to be part of something again. She went downstairs to ask her dad if she could go over to Dalton's to study. She had promised Orias that she wouldn't slip this time, and she would be true to her word—unless it became absolutely necessary.

* * *

Raphael fought on. He could no longer count the number of enemies he'd defeated, step by step, blow by blow, through endless desert and unrelenting fog. He had no idea how much time had passed; the light above that masqueraded as the sun had to be counterfeit, he knew, because he'd been battling for what felt like weeks, but it had not moved at all. He didn't know how many injuries he'd sustained, but every joint felt twisted, worn, and inflamed. Big drops of blood drizzled down his brow and the cracked, parched earth at his feet greedily soaked them up.

He'd gone from being energized to exhaustion, and then new reserves of energy would shoot through him again in a cycle that kept repeating. The same had happened with his Shen energy; he'd felt such bountiful power rising within him that when a Napoleonic soldier in a French uniform charged out of the roiling gray, his bayonet raised, Raphael simply reached out a hand and blasted him into oblivion. Other times he felt his strength wane, and when he tried to call on the power of Shen he felt nothing but his own outstretched hand and the faintest flicker of a spark on his fingertips. At those times, he heaved a sigh, lifted his hands in a guard position, and fought on.

In this strange place Shen seemed to fail more often than not, and he had a feeling that its power was somehow dimmed in the borderlands of the Dark Territory. But he didn't really have time to think about it—whenever one enemy died, a new one appeared to take its place.

In the beginning, which seemed like weeks ago now, there had been moments when Raphael felt he couldn't go on.
I'll just stop,
he thought.
I can't do this. I'm too tired. I'll just lie down and let them kill me.
But somehow he'd found the will to continue, and he'd come to understand that he really could go on forever. He seemed to possess reserves of strength he'd never known he had and his will was almost boundless. He would not lie down. He would not die. He would not give up. And he would not quit fighting until he came out safe on the other side of this desert or whatever it was—even if he had to fight every kind of ancient warrior he'd ever read about.

And it was beginning to look like that's exactly what he'd have to do.

He'd gone through the ranks of every kind of historical combatant he'd ever heard of until he worked his way up to present-day foes. A man who looked like a U.S. Navy Seal, but who wore a shirt with Russian letters on it, now appeared out of the fog and almost gutted him with a huge knife. Raphael managed to dodge the blow and then landed a lucky kick, hitting the pommel of the Russian's knife and jamming the blade into his shoulder. He fell to one knee with an agonized scream, and Raphael blasted him with a head kick, sending him spiraling out of sight, into the drifting gray.

There was not a moment to rest. His next assailant stormed into sight wearing full Kevlar body armor. He also had some kind of headset and goggles that blinked with digital bits of information, like it was collecting battle data. Raphael's new enemy wielded a short, compact machine gun. He turned it on Raph, fired, and missed. The gun's report was like a cannon. Desperate, Raphael somehow summoned a surge of Shen from the soles of his feet and up through his body. He let it burst out of the palm of his hand, just before the tungsten bar the gun had fired streaked toward him (he didn't know how he knew what sort of ammo the gun used, he just knew it, in the same way that he knew he could go on fighting forever). The Shen blast split through the projectile like a hot blade slicing through a soft stick of butter, and the two halves shot harmlessly past Raphael on either side as he went into a spring attack, shot forward, disarmed the enemy with a
Bong Sau,
and then slammed the butt of his gun back into his face. The info-goggles shattered, sending streaks of blood down the futuristic soldier's cheeks. Raphael turned the gun on him and fired.

He didn't bother to look at the mess it made of his enemy's head; he stepped over his body, moving further into the fog, claiming the one extra yard of territory he'd gained. Already the next enemy drew near. Raph couldn't see him but a red laser light sweeping through the waste heralded his approach. Raph felt heat when the beam settled on him, and he threw himself backward into the dust as a pulse of energy blasted forth from his enemy. It missed him but caught the gun he was holding, and as Raphael landed on his back on the ground, the liquefied plastic of the gun's body melted onto his hands, scalding them. He cried out in pain and managed to dislodge his fingers from the steaming wreckage just in time to roll out of the way of another blast.

He looked up just as the fog parted and was able to make out what looked like a half-person, half-robot. A laser beam flowed from the single eyespot on its helmet, scanning for Raph. It looked a little like the guy in those old
Robocop
movies, he thought—except this was the real thing. A real cyborg commando, a warrior of the future, was coming at him.

He reached out to send a Shen blast its way, but came up empty and was forced to roll out of the way of another sonic blast. Raph didn't know what kind of gun it was, but it emitted a shot like a wave of distortion flowing through the air. It looked kind of like a heat mirage rising from the blacktop on a hot summer day.

Diving behind a boulder, he dodged another blast as the laser sight scanned past him. With no other weapons and no way to get close to the enemy without getting liquefied, Raph grabbed the only thing he could—the large stone he was hiding behind. His muscles protested, quivering as he lifted the heavy rock above his head with both hands and cocked back to throw it. As the laser scanner zeroed in on him, he chucked the rock at his enemy's head, then dove to the side to avoid the blast he knew was coming. The shot liquefied the rock in mid air, and something that looked like freshly mixed cement splashed onto the visor of the cyborg. It cooled instantly, leaving his laser sight covered by a crust of solidifying rock. Shrieking with fury, the creature fired but the shots went wild. As Raphael charged, they liquefied the ground right in front of him, turning it into a pit of simmering quicksand. Raph jumped over it as his blinded adversary blasted away, hitting nothing. Somehow Raph managed to avoid the deadly shots until he was close enough to touch his enemy.

“Hey R2D2, I'm right here,” he said, and the cyborg jerked his gun toward the sound of Raphael's voice. As he did, Raph grabbed his forearm and, using his enemy's own momentum, swung him into the pit of molten sand. The cyborg hit feetfirst then lost his footing and fell on his back, sinking down with a cry of anguish until only his groping, metallic hands were visible above the quickly congealing quicksand.

Raphael grabbed the discarded energy gun and took another few steps into the fog. He was on the top of a low rise now, and he could see several more cyborgs coming toward him through the haze. He vaporized one, then another, then another with the gun he'd captured, demolishing thirteen of them by the time the gun's charge finally gave out. He was moving down the rise when the fog parted again. This time he saw that he was atop a slope that led down into a valley filled with futuristic warriors—hundreds of them, or thousands, or maybe hundreds of thousands. He stared at the sea of enmity and violence for a moment and then closed his eyes. He'd done this before, during slight pauses in the battle, just taking an instant to replenish his inner store of energy with a little micro-meditation. Now as he did so, he felt Shen filling him as never before, and within it, there was a message.

It wasn't a message from some outside source, from Master Chin or from the All or from the Magician, even. It was from within himself, maybe his subconscious or his higher self, maybe even his soul—whatever that was.

As long as you are willing to fight, enemies will come. There will always be another opponent, another confrontation, another injustice to right, another insult to avenge, another reason to go to war. You can keep fighting forever.

It was true. Raphael understood that instantly. He could keep on going like this for all eternity, and it would never stop. But that wasn't what he wanted.

The only way to stop fighting,
he thought,
is to refuse to fight.
The epiphany struck him with such weight that it made him dizzy, and giddy excitement replaced his exhaustion.

Raphael looked down at the gun in his hand and cast it aside, and then he fell to his knees. The new wave of opponents was grinding its way toward him now. They were monstrosities of flesh and robotics, drone-like death machines, small, bizarre tanks that seemed to breathe. He saw these horrors approaching and opened his arms wide, as if to embrace them. He saw the gun barrels pointed at him, the titanium teeth, the steel blades, the missile tips.

He took a breath and shouted across the desolate plains with all the power his voice could muster: “I will not fight!” he yelled. Then, even louder, “
I WILL NOT FIGHT!
”

For an instant, he was overcome with the terrifying thought that this was the end. His enemies would now destroy him, and he would die. Then, in a crunching of gears and a clink of armor, their advance stopped. All his mighty futuristic opponents stood before him, gloriously powerful, ominously deadly—and completely, totally still.