William's Hand

Venn woke on the third hour in the Mirror World, and his first word was "Ow."

It was a good sign. Zoe, who had been kneeling over him with her sleeve pressed to his forehead, burst into tears. Jin said something sharp in Korean, turned his face away, and pretended to be adjusting his glasses. Archie said nothing. He crouched by the pavement and watched the gray color return, very slowly, to the dark face, as one watches a tide come in over a flat.

"What happened?" Venn croaked.

"You fainted."

"Did I?" He tried to sit up and fell back. "God. Did I faint? In front of a Valkyrie? Tell me I didn't."

"You did."

"That's so embarrassing." He closed his eyes. "Is the tree okay?"

"I don't know."

"And Sera?"

"I don't know that either."

Venn lay still. His chest rose and fell, shallow, uneven, like a bellows with a hole in it. When he spoke again, his voice was small. "I feel like I got hit by a truck. And then the truck reversed."

"You need rest," said Jin.

"I'll rest when I'm dead."

"That," said Jin, "is not funny."

"Sorry." Venn opened one eye. "Is it a little funny?"

"No."

"A little?"

Jin's mouth twitched. "Slightly," he admitted.

…

They found shelter in an empty bank.

It stood at the end of the street, a squat granite building with brass doors and a revolving lobby, and it was dark inside and smelled of dust and cool stone. They laid Venn on a bench in the manager's office, on a folded coat, with another for a pillow. Zoe sat beside him and held his hand. Jin disappeared into the vaults with a lamp, muttering about diagnostics. The faceless pedestrians drifted past the windows in the gray light. None of them looked in.

Archie stood at the window. He had not spoken for some time.

The man in the bakery mirror was still with him. He had not gone. He was there in the pane in front of him, a pale ghost on the glass, hovering at the edge of Archie's own reflection. A thin man in a gray suit with a paper cup. He wasn't doing anything. He was only waiting, and smiling, and sipping, like a patient in a waiting room.

He's not real, thought Archie. He's a projection. He's the Dimension's idea of my worst self.

That doesn't make him wrong.

"Archie."

He turned. Zoe had risen from the bench and come to stand beside him. She was very pale, her hair tangled, her eyes red-rimmed, but her chin was lifted.

"You've been standing there an hour."

"Have I?"

"You've been standing there like you're listening to something."

"I'm not."

"Archie."

"I'm not," he said again, and heard how thin it sounded. He forced a smile. "I'm tired. That's all. I'm thinking about Venn."

She looked at him. She did not believe him. She didn't say so. She only reached out and squeezed his arm, briefly, and went back to the bench, and he watched her go with a hollow sick feeling in his chest.

It's the first time, he thought. Not a lie. Not exactly. But it's the first time I've kept a thing back from her.

He turned away from the window and went to find a place to be alone.

…

He found it in a washroom at the back of the bank.

It was small and tiled and smelled of old soap. There were two basins, a mirror above each, and a single flickering bulb. He stood in front of the nearer one with his hands braced on the porcelain, and looked at his own face: gaunt, bearded, gray-eyed, ten years older than he'd been a month ago and somehow ten years younger. A man who had stood on a hillside under a burning sky. A man who had held a shield.

Who are you?

The face in the glass blinked.

It did not blink when he did. It blinked a half second late, with a slow, deliberate, courteous lowering of the eyelids. Then it changed. The beard shrank. The hair paled and smoothed. The cheekbones filled out, softened, took on the faint ruddy glow of good wine and good living. The gray eyes darkened. The ragged coverall became a gray suit, perfectly pressed, with a white pocket square.

"Archie," said William Cross. "Good. You're alone."

His voice was warm and even. It came out of the mirror like a hand extended.

Archie did not step back. He held on to the sink. His heart was pounding, and his mouth had gone dry, but he found, to his own astonishment, that he was not afraid. He was angry. It was a clean, cold, steady anger, the first he had felt in years, and it spread through his chest like water through sand.

"William."

"I would prefer it if you called me Will. We're colleagues."

"We're not."

"We are rather more than you think." The reflection smiled. "You're a very perceptive man, Archie. I knew you'd find me out. I'd rather hoped you would. It saves such a lot of time." He folded his hands. "Shall we talk like adults?"

"You nearly killed Venn."

"I applied pressure. There's a difference." William tilted his head. "Mr. Adebayo is quite recovered, I understand. I'm sorry for the discomfort. It was necessary. You were slow, you see. You were lingering. I have a schedule."

"A schedule."

"Investors, Archie. Deadlines. You've no idea how impatient they are." He sighed. "I really do wish it needn't have come to that. I'd much rather have done this quietly."

"Done what?"

"Taken the data. Concluded the experiment. Seen the four of you safely home."

"You're not going to see us home."

"Aren't I?"

There was a pause. In the glass, William's blue eyes were clear, and thoughtful, and perfectly sincere.

"Let me be plain," he said. "I'm going to tell you exactly where we stand, Archie, because I respect you. I don't treat my subjects like children. I think that's a mistake. You're intelligent. You can handle the truth."

…

He laid it out in the manner of a lawyer.

The Gate was his. Not metaphorically. He controlled the primary power relays, the cooling loops, the administrative keys. He had spent two years arranging it, quietly, one clause at a time, while Luca was busy with his beakers. Luca had thought him a benefactor. He had signed a great many pages without reading them. If William chose, in the next five minutes, to cut the main breaker, the Gate would shut down. The pods would go dark. The four of them would be left in the Dimensions, adrift in the space between, with no door back and no body to return to.

"Which is not," said William gently, "a threat. I want to be quite clear. It's a fact. I mention it only so that you'll understand the architecture."

"The architecture."

"I know you like that word." A flicker of amusement. "Yes. It's the shape of the situation. I hold the keys. You hold the road. Neither of us can finish without the other."

"You don't need us. You've got the data."

"I have a fraction. I need the whole." William leaned forward. "Your journey through the Spaces is generating a unique body of work. Subjective accounts of consciousness transfer. How it feels to move from one body to another. How it feels to meet a Guardian. How the mind survives a trauma that should break it. Nobody has this. Nobody has ever had it. It is, quite simply, the most valuable data set in human history." He smiled. "And you, Archie, are in the best possible position to give it to me."

"Give it to you."

"Write it down. In your own words. As you go. A diary, if you like. You needn't tell the others." He spread his hands. "I'll make sure it reaches me. The channel is already there."

"No."

"Hear me out."

"No. I won't do it."

"Of course you won't. Not at first." William sat back, perfectly unruffled. "But think, Archie. Think carefully. You're a clever man. What do you imagine happens if you refuse?"

Archie said nothing.

"I shall be obliged to apply more pressure. More pulses. More damage. Your friends are not strong. You have seen this. The young man's lungs, the other's brain, your own scarred chest. I need not do very much to unravel the lot of you." His voice was soft, almost regretful. "I should hate to. I should truly hate to. It would be such a waste."

"And if I do it?"

"Then no one need be hurt." William smiled. "You have my word. I'll hold the Gate open. I'll see that your bodies are cared for. When the experiment ends, I'll arrange the transfers. All four of you will go into new frames. Healthy ones. No cancer. No pain. A second life." He leaned toward the glass, until his face filled the whole mirror. "It's what you came for, isn't it? That's all you ever wanted."

The bulb flickered.

"Win-win," said William Cross.

…

Archie stood very still.

He thought of the Valkyrie's laughing face. He thought of a woman with a harp, singing. He thought of a hand in his own, small and warm, and the words You always catch me, and of a red-barreled pencil, and of a card taped inside a locker: COME HOME SOON.

He thought: He's lying.

And then, treacherously, he thought: Is he?

Because William was right. That was the thing that cut. He had the Gate. He had the keys. If he chose to throw the breaker, they would be lost, and nothing Archie could say or do would change it. They could not fight him. They could not reach him. They could only move forward, one door at a time, and hope that the man holding the lights was a man of his word.

And what did a diary cost?

Words. Only words. Three people's lives against a few pages of ink.

It isn't betrayal, said a small voice in his head. A warm, patient, reasonable voice, very much like his own. It's insurance. You'd be protecting them. You'd be buying time.

You'd be doing exactly what you've always done. Keeping the peace. Absorbing the blow. Making sure that nobody gets hurt.

You're so good at it.

"Think it over," William said. His reflection was already thinning, drawing back from the glass. "You needn't answer now. I'll be in touch. When you're ready, simply begin writing. I'll know." A last bright smile. "And Archie? Do give my regards to Mr. Adebayo."

The glass went blank.

Archie stood alone in the tiled washroom, with his hands on the cold porcelain. The face that looked back at him was his own again, gaunt and bearded and gray-eyed. It looked frightened. It looked, he thought, like a man who has just been offered a very great deal of money to forget a thing he knows.

Beyond the door, faintly, Venn's voice was singing something out of tune.

He turned on the tap. He splashed cold water over his face. He stood there, dripping, and looked at himself for a long time.

Then he dried his hands, very carefully, on his coverall, and went back out to the others, and said nothing at all.