Keeping his distance, he steels himself and pushes on the door.
It swings open to reveal an enormous beehive: a double-height cylindrical cellar, home to some of the world’s finest vintage wines.
The way all the bottles point to the center of the room reminds Romer of miniature war cannons. And on the ground and along the wall, giant wine barrels lay on their bellies in the shape of a crescent.
At the far end of the room, Romer notices a small puddle of wine. But it isn’t pooled anywhere near a spout, which makes him wonder if the spill is in fact, wine.
σ
Neve lingers in the door frame of Galen’s entrance, one foot inside the unit, the other out in the hallway.
The state of the loft is absolutely tragic. Nothing shy of a massacre.
These horribly mutilated objects were relics with mystery. History. And now they are sprawled across the floor in pieces, robbed of their integrity.
Cops wouldn’t stoop this low—ravaging priceless artifacts like savages.
This mess is too hideous not to be personal.
Neve wonders if the culprits responsible for this mess would have unleashed the same hell at Dylan’s, had they failed to recover Galen’s book.
And she wonders about the text Galen received, right before he abruptly terminated their session.
What could it have possibly said that frightened him as much as it did?
Was it a warning? From whom?
The ding of the elevator nearly makes her heart stop. But its doors remain shut.
Different floor.
Neve exhales a huge sigh of relief, and then steps into the loft and shuts the door behind her.
The last thing she needs right now is for one of Galen’s neighbors to walk by and start bombarding her with questions she won’t be able to answer.
It’s too weird being back here already. Especially given the huge discrepancy in the loft’s condition.
Neve was standing right here when Galen rushed back with The Fray Theory from down the hallway to her left. And she remembers the door at the far end swinging shut behind him.
She knows she should stay put, but her curiosity is proving to be much more compelling than her fear of consequence.
She looks in the direction of the kitchen.
Detecting no signs of Romer, she throws caution to the wind and ventures into the hallway towards what she assumes to be Galen’s office.
She knocks out of courtesy, and hearing no sound, opens the door to reveal what used to be a quaint and charming study.
The state of this room is more or less on par with the rest of the loft. But there is something unnerving about it that Neve can’t seem to quite figure out.
Her heartbeat is rising up to twice what it should be. Her insides are twisting tight enough to bend her at the waist. But what could her insincts know that her brain has yet to discover?
Remembering her promise to Romer, she begins to back out of the room. But all of a sudden, she finds herself pinned in place.
Neve’s eyes fill with awe and wonder. She realizes what she’d initially registered as wallpaper, is in fact a gigantic map—a meticulous, hand-drawn map of an ancient city with a winding river snaking through the heart of it.
And it dawns on her that she’s dreamt of not only this map, but this entire room last night, before she visited Galen’s home for the very first time.
She also remembers how in her dream, regardless of what page she flipped to, ‘six’ was the number of the page she landed on.
Come to think of it, the number six also appeared in her dream of merging into a sea of identical cars.
Neve’s vision starts to blur as she thinks of the beautiful stranger who’s been plaguing her dreams as of late.
The mysterious apparition who incited something ferocious in her at the cemetery, nearly costing Neve her life.
And last night, when she dreamt of this room, it was the very sight of him that made her scream her way into consciousness.
He was standing right in front of her—right there by that console with the vintage typewriter on it.
Just then, Neve notices a small, white envelope in the typewriter’s paper rest, and walks over to take a closer look.
It’s odd, how the entire room is in shambles, and yet this envelope is resting delicately onto the paper rest, completely undisturbed.
Was it put here after the break-in?
Neve picks it up and reads the hand-written ‘N. K.’ designation at the bottom right corner. And although the initials could belong to nearly anyone, she feels convinced this letter was meant for her to find. And even if not, aren’t the initials a good enough excuse for her to give into her curiosity?
She flips the envelope over.
The wax used to seal it is a deep, lapis blue. And the elegant impression that is stamped onto the wax simply reads: ‘Q’.
Neve breaks through the seal and retrieves what appears to be a personal letter.
The penmanship is beyond exquisite. Aristocratic even. And it vaguely reminds Neve of the scribbled annotations she discovered in Galen’s book.
My dear,
This letter is not a revelation, but a simple reminder of what your soul already knows to be true.
Dreams are devoid of logic. They neither begin, nor end. In dreams, we do not question reality. We bend the laws of physics, and defy gravity. And I know it’s hard to believe, but you are not dreaming.
I have waited long for this day. For the day your self-awareness transcends your physical limits. But awareness is worthless without action. Talent, wasted without creation. Life, unlived without purpose.
You have a choice. You can either welcome your calling, or settle for mediocrity. Settle for dreams that are only dreamt, destined never to come true.
And your dreams are of the kind, which must.
~Q
The inky letters on the page blur into squiggles.
Welling up, Neve lowers the letter with quivering hands, feeling as though she’s just recalled a deeply buried memory.
She can’t imagine what’s causing her to have such an emotional reaction… to such a vague letter from a complete stranger.
And truth be told, she doesn’t want to know.
Where the hell is Romer?
Chapter 25
Caprice
Galen is nowhere in sight. And with each passing second, Romer’s becoming more and more convinced that the puddle he’s staring at in the back of the room, isn’t wine. He should grab Neve and get out of here. Now. But like a wiper-blade, a flash of black swoops down across his vision and tightens around his neck.
Panicked, Romer drops his Swiss Army Knife and reaches up to his throat, but a swift blow to the back of his knees knocks him onto his shins.
Ridges of a man’s boot are pushing down on his spine, but the thick cord around his neck is pulling him back.
Romer pats the ground frantically, but his knife is nowhere to be found. He reaches up to reduce the tension around his neck, but he can’t seem to dig his fingers under the cord.
The throbbing in his temples intensifies each time his heart pumps blood into his head. It feels like someone is drilling a hole into his skull. The tension above his Adams apple is making him gag, and his lungs are on the verge of collapsing.
He is frozen in a lethal limbo and fast running out of hope. This is Isaac all over again.
As his blurry vision paves the way for a black-out, something akin to an idea emerges in his mind.
His focus sharpens. His senses heighten. He leans forward into the cutting sting of the cord, lowering himself as close to the ground as he can tolerate.
And he feels the surge of a faint vibration outside of himself. He’s felt it before, like a foreshock before a seismic earthquake.
Romer concentrates his will on what he needs to do. He lets the vibrations seep into him, and then—with the mere thought of it—the wine bottles and the barrels lining the perimeter EXPLODE.
/> With that, the crushing pressure on Romer’s spine is lifted, and the tension around his throat, released.
Romer slips away and backs off from his attacker.
And as tides of wine flood the cellar, he watches a man in black—ravaged by the shards of glass lodged in his skin—collapse into the shallow sea of aromatic garnet, floating face-down.
Heaving wet coughs, Romer struggles to his feet with his eyes glued to his assailant. He watches him sway from side to side as the dissipating waves of wine splash against his lifeless body.
And all Romer can think of is how he’d rather die than go back to prison.
σ
Neve starts to back out of Galen’s study. It was a bad idea to come here—to have involved Romer.
They should just—
Someone’s arm wraps around her neck, and Neve instantly knows it isn’t Romer’s.
The chokehold is extremely firm. Firm enough to snap her neck. And an explosion of terror rattles her as she realizes snapping her neck might be exactly what her aggressor is trying to do.
With that thought, her body starts to fall asleep.
Shit—no, no, no!
She is running out of time. Once the prickliness starts to take over, it will be beyond excruciating to lift a finger.
With the nagging numbness in her flesh already compromising her, Neve pulls Dylan’s blade from her back pocket.
A small jolt sends a rush of prickliness through her arm, and she suspects having unwittingly sprung the blade out.
She rotates the blade in her hand, grips it firmly, and stabs her attacker in the leg.
His scream is terrifying. But it’s almost as much a relief as the breath Neve manages to take before he cuts off her air supply again.
Only this time, his grip feels weaker.
Much weaker.
The peppery prickliness overcoming Neve’s flesh is excruciating. Her nerves are firing so violently that even the smallest movements feel impossible.
But this is life or death.
She goes to pull the blade out, but it seems to be lodged in her attacker’s bone.
So she twists it instead.
His second howl is deafening. Murderous, even.
He grabs the back of Neve’s neck and SLAMS her forehead into the wall.
A strangled grunt leaps out the back of her throat.
He then clutches her jaw, and BASHES the back of her head against the opposite wall.
At the verge of collapsing, Neve’s knees give out from under her. But her aggressor tightens his grip of her jaw, and pins her to the wall.
The darkness surrounding Neve’s vision closes in, seeping into the black mask of the man holding her life in his hands.
Neve searches his eyes for a hint of compassion, for mercy, but what she finds instead is certainty:
He is going to kill her.
Help—Neve grabs his wrist with both hands, but they unclasp a moment later when he punches her in the gut.
He punches her again and again, until a string of blood spurts from her mouth and vanishes onto his black clothes.
Where are you? Neve thinks of Romer as another punch lands on her frail frame.
He wouldn’t leave me… He’d be here.
Unless he couldn’t.
With the thought of Romer in peril, Neve’s heart quickens, pumping an overabundance of adrenaline through her veins. The rush of prickliness paves the way for calm and clarity, and then Neve is standing strong, her body tougher than wrought iron.
As the man in black reaches for his weapon, Neve hears the hardwood floor creak, louder and louder, until it suddenly collapses under her weight.
Neve’s hair floats up as gravity pulls her through the floor. With her voice trapped in her throat, she crashes into one floor after another, paving a vertical path all the way down through the building.
Her plunge ends abruptly when she crashes onto a hard surface, the earth-shattering impact shaking up the space like a mild earthquake.
Neve lies amidst the wreckage of her fall as debris pours from the oculus above.
As her density gradually returns to normal, Neve starts to feel the bulging corners of the bed of rubble underneath. With a weak grunt, she props herself up into a slouch, and looks about what appears to be an underground parking lot. And behind her, within the pile of rubble, she finds the man who attacked her lying on his back.
Without taking her eyes off him, Neve shifts her weight onto all fours and backs away from him. But he doesn’t even flinch.
Is he passed out? Faking it?
Keeping her distance, Neve rises to her feet and walks around him for a better look.
There is a film of dust over his unblinking eyes. And blood, pooling at the base of his skull.
Neve chokes on her gasp and backs away.
She can call it self-defense. She can call it a freak accident. She can rationalize it any way she likes, but when it comes down to it, she’s just killed someone.
Heavy stomping reaches her ears from a nearby stairwell. She snaps out of remorse and dives down, rummaging through the rubble for Dylan’s blade.
She salvages it from beneath a broken plank, and in the process, also discovers her assailant’s weapon; the gun he tried to pull on her, right before the floor collapsed under them both.
She grabs it and dashes towards the parking lot exit, bursting through it.
σ
At the sound of progressive crashes, Romer bursts out of the cellar, his drenched clothes clinging to his body.
“Neve!?” he shouts as he makes his way through the kitchen. “NEVE!?”
He reenters the living space just as a pair of men in black step into the loft from the hallway.
Romer staggers to a stop, bracketed by floor to ceiling libraries on either side of him. His eyes dart about the space for something to use as a weapon, but there is nothing within reach except fragments of things once whole.
Concealed in masks, the strangers in black start to take aim.
At the sight of this, Romer senses a faint vibration outside of himself, and time slows down to a crawl.
He watches a pair of red laser dots glide over the pillaged furniture towards him, and next thing he knows, he is raising his hands to eclipse the red glare threatening to blind him.
With this gesture of his hands, hundreds of books fly off their shelves and start to assemble midair like tiles. They snap together like a puzzle of mismatched rectangles, and within seconds, Romer finds himself shielded behind a floating barrier of books.
A barrage patters on the other side of the barrier.
Romer dives down and lands at the foot of a spiral staircase.
Looking up, he remembers that Galen’s loft is on the topmost floor of this building.
Like Dylan’s.
With hope radiating from his eyes, he springs to his feet and bolts up the stairs.
He emerges into Galen’s bedroom with his eyes to the ceiling. But unlike Dylan’s apartment, there’s no rooftop hatch to aid him in his escape.
It isn’t until he turns and looks over the railing of the mezzanine that he realizes the book barrier has already crumbled into a massive pile.
Where are they?
Stomping draws his focus to the staircase, and he once again finds himself in crosshairs.
Suddenly, the objects in the room start to glitch. Some vanish and reappear in the exact same spot, while others reappear slightly displaced.
It’s like flipping through a flip-book—except the pictures are in a random order. The kind of chaos Romer had always sensed, but never seen.
Within this state of flux, he senses the shooter’s grip tightening around the trigger. And then—with a silver glow radiating from his eyes—Romer’s mind throws his enemy back against the wall.
The invisible force is so powerful, however, that it pushes back onto Romer, thrusting him backwards.
The window his back collides with shatters upon impact. And the air is suddenl
y fresh and cold.
Romer gawks at the building’s exterior.
In trying to save his own life, he's just expelled himself from a six-storey building!
His heart drops even faster than he is, knowing in mere moments, all will fade to black.
Do something! DO SOMETHING!
Further up the street, he spots a black SUV. And it’s high enough to absorb most of his momentum.
Beckoned by his mind, the car rips from its spot and charges down the street, leaving behind trails of burnt plastic as it skids to catch Romer’s fall.
σ
Neve bursts out of Galen’s parking lot and onto the main street, her mind and heart racing one another.
What should she do!? Run? Hide?
But Romer—
The sound of glass shattering draws her attention upwards, and she looks up to find Romer airborne, enveloped by a cloud of glistening shards.
Merge.
Her flesh starts to fall asleep, prickly and painful. One by one, her Proxies snap onto her like magnets, increasing her body’s density in a chain reaction.
She becomes denser and heavier one infinitesimal jolt at a time, the pain more and more bearable with each fusion.
And then, she is no longer her-self.
She is her-selves—an indestructible anchor who is connected to all shared dimensions.
She hears a soft groan, and then DROPS by half a foot as the ground beneath her collapses into a wide and shallow crater. But not once does she take her eyes off the silhouette falling from the sky.
As though her will is tangible, it pushes back up against Romer, decelerating his plunge. And then he is suspended midair, close enough to reach out and touch her hand.
The screech of skidding tires fills Neve’s ears, and she looks down to find a black SUV charging at her in a solo stampede.
No.
Neve turns on the balls of her feet and sinks into a defiant stance, her ruby eyes glued to her impending doom.
“NEVE!” Romer’s scream cuts through her.
CRASH.
The car’s front caves in upon impact, rippling like a collapsing accordion. The powerful collision wipes Neve clean from under Romer, the backs of her feet scraping the asphalt as she resists the momentum.