Chapter 55

  Adam sat on the edge of the roof, his feet dangling away into nothingness. He dropped the remnants of his dinner over the side and watched the empty can spin as it fell. For a moment, he wondered what it would feel like to lean forward and join it, just fall into the growing darkness and let it swallow him whole.

  He stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets, hunching inward against the chill. In the stillness of the darkened city, a single tower glowed like a yellowed tooth, standing out between all the others.

  The Seeker Stone pulsed when he brushed it with his finger, pulling him toward that singular point of light.

  That was their destination.

  That was the source of the primary tunnel.

  Hector sat down beside him, kicking his legs off the edge and stared into the distance.

  "So, that's it?" Hector asked, pulling out a battered pack of cigarettes. "That's where we're headed?"

  He offered one to Adam.

  Adam shook his head. Hector shrugged and lit up, shielding the flame from the wind. "I thought you were supposed to go toward the light. Nothing about that makes me want toward it."

  "I used to watch a lot of nature shows back in college," Adam said. "One night I saw a documentary on something called an anglerfish. You ever heard of them?"

  Hector took a long drag, letting the smoke out to be carried away by the wind. "Heard of, but I don't know anything about them."

  "They live in water too deep for the light to reach," Adam explained. "So, they have this little thing that juts out from their forehead. It glows. Down there, it's one of the only sources of light. Other fish can't help but swim toward it. That's how they hunt."

  Hector looked at the glowing tower again. His frown deepened and the cigarette burned, forgotten in his hand. "Yeah... That's definitely not going to help me sleep tonight. But it makes sense. We're walking into the belly of the beast."

  Adam nodded slowly. "Feels like it."

  "How do you see it all playing out? Honestly." Hector flicked the remnants of his cigarette into the wind. "All of us dying, kicking and screaming?"

  Adam laughed and shook his head. "Nah. I think we're going to be alright."

  "Seriously?" Hector's mouth twitched, but his eyes stayed skeptical.

  "Yeah,” Adam said, standing. "A friend once told me, stupid optimism will get you through when nothing else does.' We've run the gauntlet and we're still standing."

  "So we just pretend everything is fine until it is?" Hector asked.

  "Kind of." Adam held out his hand and pulled Hector up. "We are almost definitely going to die, eventually. But we were almost definitely going to die a dozen times already. Even if we pull this off odds are tomorrow's just more of the same. So I've decided I'm going to see how far the rabbit hole goes."

  "Alice in Wonderland?" Hector asked.

  Adam shrugged. "Seemed appropriate."

  The last of sunset’s color slipped below the horizon as they gathered around the fire. The wind began to pick up and the modest blaze popped, throwing sparks into the air.

  "I wish we had some hotdogs," Jessica said, tossing a chair leg onto the pile.

  "Or some marshmallows." Samantha groaned and looked in the can of peaches she was holding. "These just aren't cutting it. Do you remember that week we stayed at the cabin, and we ate smores every night for dinner?"

  "Oh god, stop..." Natalie moaned, flopping backward onto her sleeping bag. "I would sell Adam for some chocolate.”

  "Shh, The Salesman will hear you!" Samantha teased.

  Adam reached into his pack and pulled out a small bar of chocolate. "Oh, you'd sell me?"

  Natalie shot upright at the sight of the chocolate. "I would never!"

  "Uh, huh," Adam said, tossing the chocolate into her lap. "As long as I can bribe you."

  Natalie tore open the packaging and took a bite, making inappropriate sounds as she chewed. "Oh god, this really is better than sex..."

  Samantha held her hand out expectantly. "If you don't share a bite of that with me, I will divorce you." Natalie forked over the chocolate and continued to chew.

  "I want a steak. Rare, with onions and mushrooms," Jessica said, and they all groaned.

  "Steak..." Hector sounded like he was about to cry. "And a beer."

  "Okay, enough torturing ourselves with imaginary food porn." Adam put his hands out in front of the fire. If he tried hard enough he could almost pretend they were just camping, and not about to suicidally walk into enemy territory. The conversation slowly died and they sat in companionable silence while the fire burned.

  "So, what's the plan tomorrow?" Jessica asked, putting her hands up toward the fire. Adam caught a brief flash as the firelight reflected off her fingernails. Her powers made his skin crawl.

  "I don't have one," Adam said, pulling off his boots and inching his feet closer to the fire. "I wouldn't even know what to plan for. All we know is there's something in that building causing that." He pointed overhead to the rolling clouds, intermittently lit by bright green arcs of lightning.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  "It doesn't even smell like a storm," Hector said, wrinkling his nose and holding his side tenderly. "More like hot metal and burnt toast."

  Lightning split the sky, bathing them in flashes of eerie green. The wind slowly died, but no sound came from above and the silent storm raged on.

  "The city's full nightmares, but has anyone else noticed the sky's clear?" Samantha looked up and another flash of lightning lit her face. "When this all started, we were always seeing shapes in the clouds. Some looked like birds and some looked like..."

  "Like that thing that attacked New York," Adam said.

  "Something attacked New York?" Jessica asked, tilting her head.

  "Yeah, something that looked a hell of a lot like a dragon. Fire breathing and all." Natalie shuddered, inching away from the fire. "From the helicopter shots it was the size of a 747. None of that TV bullshit either where their wings are their arms. They're not built like birds. I'm talking arms, legs and wings. The back muscles on that thing would make a bodybuilder jealous. It set central park on fire in one pass, that's when the Helicopter feed died."

  "Christ,” Hector muttered, his hand clutching at the pendant hidden beneath his shirt.

  "Wyverns have wings for arms," Samantha said. "Dragons have separate limbs and wings. Then there's drakes, linnorms and..." Samantha trailed off, catching their looks. "What?"

  Natalie and Adam looked at each other and pointed at Samantha. "Nerd!" they said in unison.

  Samantha rolled her eyes and pulled the heavy tome out of her bag. She cracked it open with a dramatic upturn of her nose. "Remember that next time you need answers."

  Natalie laughed, sliding her arm around Samantha's shoulders and pulling her closer. She planted a kiss on her head and they linked fingers.

  Adam noticed Jessica stiffen. Her fists clenched in her lap as she turned toward the fire, her face locked in a mask of barely hidden pain. "I think they're afraid of what's in the clouds," she said quietly.

  "What?" Hector looked up, his eyebrows scrunching into a frown.

  Natalie's laughter died as she looked up, Adam and Samantha following her gaze.

  "I don't see anything but lightning up there," Adam said.

  "Don't look at the lightning, look past it. Near the bolts, not on them." Jessica didn't raise her eyes from the fire. Her fingers flexed and unflexed in her lap as she stared into the flames.

  The lightning flashed again and Adam squinted, forcing his eyes to not focus on the bright green afterimages. A flicker of movement caught his eye as the lightning dimmed. He waited, blinking up until another bolt split the sky. A shape like a massive finger writhed just behind the cloud cover, flexing and bending at impossible angles.

  Natalie sucked in a sharp breath. "Oh no..."

  Adam felt a lump of ice slide into his belly and his heart stuttered against his ribs. A deep primal fear descended on him as another bolt raced across the sky. He saw more shapes swimming in the clouds, each larger than the one before. Adam traced the shapes with his finger, frame by frame toward the lit tower, until he saw it. A writhing mass seethed above, half-lit by the lights on top of the building. The tower was the lure and this was the Anglerfish.

  "We are so fucked," Natalie said, not taking her eyes off of the sky. "How in the hell are we supposed to fight something like that? Those tentacles are connected, it's all one big fucking monster!"

  Adam's shoulders slumped. Hope drained from the air in an instant, leaving only the cold and fatigue. Natalie was right, they didn't stand a chance. But they never had. Every step had been hopeless, every victory a shout into the storm. And yet, they were still here.

  "I'm still going," he said quietly.

  Jessica looked up from the fire, the light flickering in her eyes. "You are?"

  Adam felt like a mouse caught in her gaze. His pulse pounded in his ears and he swallowed, forcing himself to take slow deep breaths. His mouth was too dry to answer, so he nodded and took a long pull from his bottle, coughing as it went down.

  "Yes." He fought against the urge to look skyward. "No pep talks. No speeches. I'm just going. You can come or stay, but I'm not deciding for you."

  The silence nearly broke him. No one spoke; all eyes fixed on the sky. Even Samantha didn't move as her book slipped from her lap to the rooftop, forgotten.

  "I'm staying up for a while, so I'll take watch," Adam said, standing up and turning from the fire. He walked to the far edge of the rooftop until the only light was from the single lit tower. The chill bit into him and he shoved his hands deep into his pockets. Letting his eyes drift upward again, he watched the alien god-thing writhe behind the clouds.

  He stared at the clouds for a long time, letting the cold and the wind numb his mind until he was nearly asleep. The sound of gentle footsteps roused him and he turned to see Jessica walking toward the edge, backlit by the dying fire.

  "Hey," she said, taking a seat beside him.

  "Hey." Adam felt goosebumps that had nothing to do with the cold climb up his arms.

  "Everyone else is asleep." She brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, curling inward against the chill. Her hair whipped in the breeze and she pulled it over her shoulder. "I wanted to talk to you."

  Adam nodded, meeting her gaze. Her pupils had narrowed into vertical slits, catching the same green as the lightning overhead. He fought the urge to flinch as she studied him. "Do I scare you?"

  "Yes," he said without hesitation.

  She nodded slowly, her voice low. "I scare myself more."

  "It's not your fault,” he said. The words felt forced in his mouth, like he was trying to convince himself more than her.

  "Maybe." She held out her hands, turning them in the near darkness. Her nails caught a flash of lightning, too thick, too sharp, and too deliberate to belong to anything human. "It's because I seem like a monster. Just another thing from the dark."

  Adam started to say something, but she held up her hand. "Don't. I don't want or need your platitudes. Just be honest with me."

  "Okay," Adam whispered, before letting out a deep sigh. "Yes. You remind me of the things we keep fighting. It makes my skin crawl and every time you're near me I want to run in the opposite direction."

  "That's certainly honest," Jessica said, laughing. The sound was distinctly human, bitter and without humor.

  "I just meant..." Adam started, but she waved him off.

  "No, it's fine. I appreciate it. It's not like I haven't thought the same thing every time I look in a mirror. It's been what? Three days since you pulled me out of that basement and saved me from Amir? I wouldn't trust me either." She cupped her hands and blew into them.

  "I think it's because you're a piece of the old world and still somehow alien." Adam forced himself to turn toward her. "We never met, but I knew Stephen and he talked about you a lot. And when we found you..."

  "I ripped someone apart a few hours later," she said, finishing his thought.

  "Yeah.”

  "We might never be friends, Adam, but I appreciate what you did." She reached her hand out tentatively, letting it settle on his arm. "Most of me died with Stephen. The rest with the baby. But this...? It's something. A reason to exist, even if it's just inertia."

  He looked down at her hand, then up at her face. Tears shimmered in her eyes, carried off by the wind before they ever reached her cheeks. The guilt welled up inside of him and he put his hand over hers.

  "I'm here for it,” she said, tipping her head toward the sky. "Whatever comes next. I died in that basement and all of this is just... what comes after." She offered a smirk, leaning forward and looking over the edge. "Unless you'd rather we all just jumped. At least that would be quick."

  Adam laughed in spite of himself and shook his head. "I'm too much of a coward. I couldn't kill myself if I wanted to."

  "Good," she said. "They need you." She stood up and walked back to the fire without another word.

  Alone, Adam sat and watched the clouds writhe while the alien god slowly burrowed into their world.