Chapter 29

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IN A CAVERNOUS ROOM, SUFFUSEDin blue light, I stand before a maze of walls. Each wall is an arm-span wide and spaced by narrow corridors. I have to angle sideways to fit.

As for why I’m trying to fit, I’m not sure. Not sure why I turn right, right, left, then right again, and come before the dead end that I do. I walk in closer. Faint lines run through the wall’s expanse, dividing it into uniform rectangles, imprinting upon it a pattern of man-sized bricks. My right hand, developing a mind of its own, shoots out and splays itself in the center of one of these bricks. Its outline glows blue. Then, slowly, the brick slides out like a drawer. It floats down, lowered by some invisible mechanism, comes to a rest on the ground, and I realize it’s no brick, but a casket, like the one I saw in my fragmented memories, when Hero choked me and I was lapsing in and out of consciousness. My gaze rises, to all the bricks in the wall before me, and around me. So many caskets. Are they filled with bodies? I don’t want an answer. Get out, screams every fiber of my being, but my feet remain planted on the ground, even when the casket that slid out hisses, releasing a cloud of chemical smelling steam. The topmost surface retracts like a lid and—

And—

But there is no “and.”

“And” means incomplete. “And” means still searching.

Before, I was both. Incomplete and still searching.

But now—

Tears, hot in my eyes. They blur my vision. Still, I see her. I see her as clearly as I do in my dreams. Clearer. Because this isn’t a dream.

I choke back a sob and whisper her name.