The Secret Sea (38 page)

That still doesn't—

And then, without warning, Zak was plunged into darkness. And silence. There was only the sound of his own breath, and then even that died away, leaving him floating, insensate, deaf, blind.

(I am in darkness.)

(Darkness and quiet.)

(For so long.)

Three. Hundred. Years!
Godfrey's voice erupted in the core of Zak's being, like a flare lit in darkest night. And yet still there was no light.

For three hundred years I suffered! Buried underground! Unable to hear or see. A ghost, anchored to the place where I died. Until …

(And then there is light.)

(And then there is loud.…)

The destruction of the twin towers. Liberating Godfrey from his tomb, allowing him to surface …

Centuries of isolation! Only myself! And then, in a thunderclap, I was free! Free! I emerged from under the ground into chaos, into a hell of falling steel, a fog of concrete dust, dead bodies littering the very air. Souls in flight, thousands of them, vanishing into the afterlife.

And I could not join them! I was trapped in the physical world, still bound there. I passed into my own world, then back into yours, but no one could perceive me. I was no longer in the dark, but I was just as alone. No one could help me.

All those deaths—they destroyed me. Brought me over. Made me do this to myself. Unaging. Preserved forever. Trapped underground for centuries.

No, their deaths
liberated
you. You cast the spell on yourself. You did that to yourself—they freed you. And look what you've done with your freedom!

I want my life back! I
deserve
it back! It was taken from me too early.

The boat. The waves. I lived and relived those moments over and over, a thousand, a million times in the centuries before I found your brother. I did nothing wrong! I was a servant boy on a ship, and the ship ran aground through no fault of mine! Why should I suffer such hell?

My spell to save my life had permanently bound me to the living world, even though I was no longer corporeal. I was a living ghost, unable to fully die, unable to live.

Can you imagine the torment? No, Zak, you can't. You're swimming in the black quiet right now, but you have my voice. And you've been there for only a minute or two. You cannot possibly contemplate the torture, the agony, the sheer hell of three hundred years, trapped in the dark. Only to emerge into the world and find no help.

Until your brother. Until I found your brother and used him to bring you to my world, where things were different. Where wild science could provide a way back. A way out. It had to be you, Zak. No one else would do. I had to have a connection to the physical world and a way to force someone to do what I needed. Tommy was the only way to get both.

You're going to kill people!
Zak exclaimed.
I know you want to come back to life, but you're going to kill so many people when the walls between our worlds break.

Do you think I care? Do you think I care at all about your world? Your world killed me! Imprisoned me! I'll drown the whole place in the Secret Sea if I can! I'll flood every last acre of dry land and kill everyone on it if it means bringing me back to life. And even if it doesn't,
I'll do it anyway!
My revenge!

Revenge?
Zak asked.
On who? No one did anything to you. It's all a bunch of mistakes and accidents. What's the point?

My revenge on your whole world!
Godfrey screamed.
Your world wrecked my ship; your world imprisoned me. If your world dies so I can live, so be it!

It made sense and it made no sense. Zak didn't know how much of it was true and how much of it was Godfrey's speculation. Maybe Khalid's friend Dr. Bookman could parse it; Zak couldn't. One thing Zak knew for sure, though—there was no talking to Godfrey. No debating him. No persuading him. He'd been driven mad by his centuries of imprisonment, and nothing Zak could say or do would change his mind.

Tommy!
Zak cried.
Tommy, help me!

I dazzled you when you crossed over, pretending to be your dead twin, letting you think you'd seen Tommy. Your brother tried to get you to run away from the rift between worlds, tried to scare you away from the subway. I
needed
you to come over. For this. I couldn't wait any longer. I had to get aggressive in order to overcome your brother's meddling.

But Tommy can't help you. No one can help you. Khalid has left you. Moira is powerless in this world. I'm possessing you, Zak. Like I did to that doctor. He forced me to, but the best part is that you just invited me in. Through your connection to your brother. I've been using it to communicate with you, and now I'm just pouring myself into you like water.

Downloading like a virus …

Zak screamed again and his eyes opened and he was standing elsewhere in the room, before a glass screen. His body was stiff and he could not move.

As he watched, his own hand—trembling and slow—raised from his side and moved toward the screen. Controls blinked there. The electroleum controls.

He's in me. He's using me.

Go away, Zak!
Godfrey chortled.
Back to the dark!

And then Zak was in the pitch black again, lost in the space under the World Trade Center. Or at least Godfrey's memory of it.

How long was he there? He didn't know. Couldn't tell. He tried counting, but the darkness seemed to swallow his thoughts.

After three
days
of this, he would go insane. Never mind three centuries.

Panic burned through him. Would he be lost like this forever? When Godfrey blew up the electroleum facility, would Zak's body be destroyed, his soul forever consigned to this place, this memory, this nothing?

That's not going to happen.

Sound? Here? In the deadly silent?

And then, out of the endless black murk …

A touch.

*   *   *

Zak couldn't understand where the touch came from or how he felt it. He had no body—he was an incorporeal spirit lost in a wash of infinite darkness. But he suddenly had a hand, and that hand touched another hand, the fingertips brushing against each other. It felt like touching a mirror—cool, smooth glass with the character of flesh and bone.

 … zak
 …

So weak. The voice was so weak. Or maybe it was Zak who was too weak to hear. But he clung to Tommy's voice, like a rope thrown into quicksand, and he walked his fingers up Tommy's until their palms crossed and they gripped each other's wrists.

How many years? How many years since he'd touched his twin? Tears came to Zak's nonexistent eyes, and he focused on them, made them real.

He opened his eyes. He was at the control panel still, his fingers moving of their own accord along the surface.

Get back where you belong!
Godfrey howled.

No!

And then, an echo: …
no…!

Zak could see both his hands on the panel, moving under Godfrey's control. At the same time, he could feel Tommy's grip on his wrist, somewhere back in the deep black.

The two of you combined are still weaker than I am.

As Zak watched, his hands swiped and jabbed at the controls. A warning klaxon—a new one—sounded once, loudly, blasting like a foghorn with a bad attitude. And then, entirely unbidden, Zak's head swiveled to the left, and he could only watch as one of the conduits into a tank decoupled itself. With a hiss and a mechanical whine, it retracted several inches.

Pure, raw electroleum spilled out of the tank, glowing with hot intensity.

Another conduit disconnected, this one higher up. More electroleum flowed down the side of the tank, pooling and spreading on the floor. Zak felt his lips turn up in a grin.

 … now zak together …

Zak sank briefly back into the black. He and Tommy had both hands clasped together now. He still could not see, but out in the dark he heard his twin's breath and—he imagined, or maybe not—his heartbeat.

Tommy's strong heart. Zak's repaired heart. They beat together in syncopation.

 … push!

Zak grunted and
shoved
as hard he could, tightening his grip on Tommy, pushing with all his might and—

—Godfrey shouted in surprise

—Zak stumbled forward, out of the dark, back to the world

—Tommy cried out

—Godfrey

The air before Zak smeared blue and gold and red. He felt a long, tight, taut string stretched out from his chest, vibrating and pulling at his heart. Godfrey was expelled from him but still clinging to him.

“Get! Out! Of! Me!” Zak yelled. With each word, he felt—heard—an echo from Tommy.

And then, in a rush, the string snapped, and Godfrey hovered in the air before Zak, eyes still ablaze, and Zak—suddenly in control of his body again—stumbled backward and slipped and fell.

Into the widening pool of raw electroleum.

 

SIXTY-NINE

Khalid and Moira found themselves in a lab or a medical suite of some sort. There were wheeled cots and glass display cases that stood fissured or shattered against the walls. The fire burned in a puddle on the floor. A single sprinkler overhead sputtered and spit at it. Khalid scanned the ceiling and saw why the other sprinklers had failed—the collapsing ceiling joist had severed the pipe in two places, cutting off most of the water supply.

“Look,” Moira said in a hushed whisper, pointing at the puddle.

“I've seen fire before.”

“No. Look. It's electroleum.”

Khalid squinted. Sure enough, the puddle had that familiar viscous ooze. There was another puddle merging with it, something from a broken bottle that lay nearby.

“The stuff doesn't burn on its own.” Moira sounded satisfied and relieved at the same time. “Which is good. You have to combine it with something. I bet depending on what you add to it, it burns or explodes or—”

“I love a good science lesson as much as the next guy,” Khalid lied, “but maybe we should find Zak?”

Moira shook herself as if waking up. “Right. Over there.”

He followed where she was pointing. There was no way out of this room but the hole they'd come through, a door that went right back out into the corridor.…

And a hole in the ceiling. Of course. From the collapse.

They maneuvered two cots into position and chocked them with chunks of wall, then climbed up. Khalid went first, then reached down to haul Moira up.

It was darker and smokier up here, with fewer emergency lights. But they didn't need lights—a glow up ahead practically burned through the billowing clouds. They crawled along carefully, wary of more holes in the floor.

“We have to get to where the secure area is soon, right?” he asked Moira.

She was coughing again. Man, the air itself was charred in here! She shook her head and coughed and pointed.

Where the glow emanated, a wall teetered on the brink of collapse. Just before the wall was a massive tear in the floor, a ragged ring that stretched as far as they could see. Down below, a fire burned and crackled, along with the now-accustomed pale glow of electroleum. Khalid wriggled to the lip of the tear. The floor juddered beneath him, threatening to cave in. He froze, then felt Moira's hands on his ankles. He looked over his shoulder. She was sitting up on a more secure part of the floor, clutching him tightly. “Go.” She jerked her head forward.

Khalid inched forward carefully. Moira could hold on as much as she wanted, but if the floor collapsed, his weight would drag them both down.

Peering into the hole in the floor, he could see under the wall ahead. There was a fire down there, and a wide, open expanse of floor. Rubble. A series of drums knocked akilter.

And Zak.

Zak was down there.

And he was
glowing
.…

 

SEVENTY

Zak tried to stand up, but the electroleum clung to him and made him slippery. He slipped and fell again, the stuff coating him, glowing. It smelled like ozone and burning metal and too-sweet sugar.

Around him, a wind began to whine in the room, gusting and blowing. The wind was gold and blue and red, and it was Godfrey, a banshee, a poltergeist. Maybe it was all the raw electroleum nearby. Maybe it was his anger. Maybe it was both. Whatever it was, Godfrey was beginning to affect the physical world. Zak held up his arms as papers and pens and other implements from the desks scattered around him got caught up in the wind and began to fly at him.

I can't touch you, but I can move the air!
Godfrey crowed
. I can manipulate the physical world now, and you can't stop me!

A fusillade of pens, pencils, and other debris came at Zak. He curled into a ball on the floor, covering his face with his forearms. Something stabbed into his thigh and stuck there. Something else raked at the back of his hands, drawing blood. He bit back screams as his body was assaulted over and over, pelted from all sides as the wind spun and howled. Somewhere in there was the gruesome and demented laughter of the boy who'd been dead for so long.

And also—

Zak!

Tommy? Is that you? You sound so strong.

I think it's the electroleum. It's raw and pure. It's acting like a conductor, making it easier for me to talk to you.

A pen glanced off Zak's elbow and bounced away, but he was captivated by the sight before his eyes—his arm. And hand. They were doubled, one offset ever so slightly from the other, the way something looks when you stare at it until your eyes lose focus. But his eyes were focused perfectly.