Leaving Venn

[PREVIOUSLY ON...] At the foot of the Tree, with the last verse sung and the wolf turned to a sapling, Archie Moran knelt among his friends and looked at the door in the trunk. It was closing. Sera could heal Venn, but not in time. Archie had to choose between staying, and risking that all four would be shut out of the way forward, or leaving the wounded man behind with the Keeper. He chose the second. He chose the door.

…

"We have to go," said Archie.

He said it quietly. He said it in the voice he had used all his life when the thing he was saying was going to hurt someone. It came out flat and level and horribly reasonable, and as it left his mouth he thought: There it is. There's the man in the gray suit.

"What?" said Zoe.

"The door's closing. We have maybe an hour. If we stay, we all lose it. If we go, Sera can heal him." He swallowed. "She said so. She promised. She'll keep him safe."

"Safe."

"Zoe—"

"You want to leave him. You want to leave Venn."

"I want us to get through."

"He's dying!"

"He isn't." The lie scraped his throat. "Sera can mend him. Can't you?" He turned his head. "Sera?"

Sera did not look up. Her hand lay on Venn's chest, and the green light under her palm was thin and wavering, and her face was bent. When she spoke, her voice was low.

"I can try."

"You see?"

"I said try. I did not say..." She stopped. She closed her eyes. "It is your choice, Shieldbearer. I will not tell you what to do."

"Then I've decided."

"No," said Zoe.

She had risen. She stood in the roots in the thin gold light with her hands balled at her sides and her face white and her short dark hair full of clay. Her eyes were enormous. They were fixed on his, and there was nothing in them he recognized. All the warmth, all the mischief, all the steady light that had been there since the day she stepped out of a taxi at the lab had gone out.

"No," she said again. "I'm not leaving."

"You have to."

"I don't."

"If you stay, the door shuts, and you're stuck. We're all stuck. Venn, too. And he can't get back to the lab if he's—"

"I know what happens!"

"Then—"

"I know," she said, and her voice broke. "I know what happens. I just. I can't. I can't, Archie. Don't ask me to."

He wanted to put his arms round her. He wanted it so badly that his hands trembled. He wanted to say You're right, we'll stay, we'll risk it, we'll all go down together. But he thought of the door narrowing in the light, and the wound under Sera's hand, and a voice in his head, smooth and warm, saying Someone has to be sensible.

"I'm sorry," he said.

…

It was Jin who moved first.

He had been standing very still behind Zoe, with the bandage round his head and his arms folded. His face was blank. He crossed the little space between them in three strides, and took her by both arms, firmly, and turned her to face him.

"Zoe," he said.

"Let go of me."

"No."

"Jin, let go—"

"Listen to me." His voice was low and hard. "He's right. I hate it. I hate it more than I've hated anything in my life. But he's right. If we stay and the door shuts, we are finished. All four of us. Venn too. There is no coming back from that." He tightened his grip. "I can't carry that. I won't."

"You can't mean—"

"I do. I mean it. Come on."

"No!"

"Zoe."

She was crying. She was struggling like a bird in a net, beating at his chest with both fists. He took it. He took every blow without a word, and slowly, steadily, step by step, he drew her backward toward the door. Her heels dragged in the clay. Her voice cracked and rose and became a scream.

"Venn! Venn! VENN!"

On the litter, the gray face stirred.

The eyelids lifted. The dark eyes were glazed, and far away, and for a moment they seemed not to see anything at all. Then, slowly, they found the stooped shape in the doorway, and cleared, and he smiled.

"Hey," he said. It was barely a breath. "Hey, Zoe."

"Venn—"

"S'okay." His lips were blue. "I'm fine. I'm just. I'm gonna take a nap. Go on." He tried to raise a hand. It would not rise. "Go on, gorgeous. Go be a hero."

"I can't—"

"You can." His eyes drifted to Archie, and held. "You too, Architect. Go. It's okay."

Archie could not answer.

"Look after her," said Venn.

And then he closed his eyes.

…

They went through the door at the fiftieth minute.

Nobody spoke. They did not look back. Archie walked in front, with his shield on his arm and the red pencil stub clenched in his fist, and the cold clean smell of silver and glass came up to meet him from the white. He did not cry. He felt as if there was nothing left in him to cry with. He felt like a house with its rooms stripped out.

Behind him, he heard the soft stumbling sound of Zoe being half carried. He heard Jin murmuring to her, a low steady stream in a language he did not know. He heard, far behind, a woman's voice, calm and sorrowful, calling out a single word.

"Shieldbearer."

He stopped. He did not turn.

"I will keep him," said Sera. "On my life."

He nodded. He could not say anything. He stepped over the threshold, and the white closed over him, and behind them the old door grew narrow, and narrower, and shut with a sound like a hand clapping.

…

In the lab, a green line flattened.

Otis Brennan saw it from across the room. He had been bent over the dot-matrix printer, trying for the fortieth time to coax a second message from the hissing gray machine, and he looked up at the sudden silence of the monitors. Four lines had run along the screen for weeks. They ran now in three. At the bottom of the display, where the fourth had been, a thin dotted trace lay level and faint, like a pulse under a sheet.

"Dr. Ferrara!"

Luca came at a run. He was in his slippers. He stood behind Otis's chair and stared at the screen.

"Subject three," he said. "Adebayo."

"Dormant." Otis's voice shook. "Not flatlined. The brain's still active. But it's, it's offline. It's stopped talking to the others."

"Is he—"

"I don't know. He's not dead. The body's stable. But the mind. I don't think it's coming back." He pressed a fist against his mouth. "They left him. They must have. They left him behind."

Luca said nothing. He laid a hand on the boy's shoulder.

On the screen, in a row, three green lines ran on: Archie's, Zoe's, Jin's. They had gone very quiet. The pulses were slow. They moved in unison, as in a funeral march.

…

The Mirror World was a mirror of silence.

They came out of the white into a gray morning, on a street like a street in Boston, under a sky like pewter. The buildings stood in their long gray ranks. The signs hung backward. The faceless crowd moved on the pavement, slowly, in their reversed coats. Nobody noticed three tired travelers stumbling out of a hole in the air.

They sat down on a curb, because they could not think what else to do.

Zoe sat at one end with her knees drawn up and her face in her arms. She had stopped crying. She did not seem to have anything left. Jin sat at the other, with his head back and his eyes closed, his bandage grimy, breathing slowly through his nose. Archie sat between them, with a space on either side, a foot of cold pavement that neither of them crossed.

For a long time no one spoke.

"Zoe," said Archie.

She did not answer.

"I'm—"

"Don't."

"I only want to say—"

"Please don't." She did not lift her head. "Not yet. I can't. I can't hear it yet."

He closed his mouth.

"I need to," he tried again. "I need to explain why. I need you to—"

"Archie." That was Jin. He had not opened his eyes. His voice was hoarse and quiet and not unkind. "Don't explain. We all know why."

"Jin—"

"I know it was the logical call. I know. I said so myself." A long breath. "It doesn't matter. Not yet. There's nothing you can say that'll change it."

"Then what do I—"

"Sit," said Jin. "Just sit. It's all there is to do."

So he sat.

There were three of them on the curb of a gray street in a world of reflections, and the space where the fourth should have been was a vast cold weight, pressing on all of them equally. No one made a joke. No one told a story. No one said Hey, bro. A faceless woman went by with a pram. A bell rang somewhere, backward.

After a while, Archie opened his hand.

The red pencil lay in it. He had been gripping it so hard that the barrel had left a groove in his palm. He looked at it for a long moment. Then, quite slowly, he closed his fingers again, and tucked it away, and sat with his empty hands on his knees, and did not draw.