Relentless (16 page)

He was struck by how quiet it was. Nestled deep in the woods, the facility was far away from civilization, but even those who lived here seemed to make very little noise.

The long, dimly lit corridor led the three of them to another set of double doors. These doors were glass on top, with criss-crossed wire inside. They opened suddenly with a flourish as Grant, Julie, and Hannah approached them. A nondescript man and woman stood on either side and motioned for them to enter.

Grant glanced at Hannah, who offered him a reassuring, if weak, nod.

Inside was a large, rectangular room which they had entered near one corner. Lush and soothing with an ‘‘old fashioned charm,’’ this room showed the most evidence of renovation of anything Grant had seen so far.

And here too, the walls were stuffed, packed, and jammed with books of every size, shape, and color. Wooden fixtures and a low ceiling added to the ‘‘cozy’’ feel. The area nearest to them appeared to be a lounge of sorts: a pool table, a sofa and bean bags, a few small desks with reading lamps, a handful of laptop computers, and a modest television set.

In the middle of the room was a fireplace made of grayish red bricks, surrounded by wingback chairs and small end tables. A dark crimson rug ran underneath this furniture; it was at least two inches thick, made of long, furry tendrils of string.

There were people everywhere. Dozens of them. The residents, Grant assumed. They looked disarmingly normal, and closer inspection revealed individuals from all walks of life, all social classes, and various races and ages. But he saw no children. And each and every one of them wore a golden ring on their right-hand middle finger.

On the far end of the room, in relative seclusion, sat an ancient-looking desk piled high with dozens—perhaps hundreds—more books. Barely visible behind the mountains of books was the top of a simple desk chair. If one looked hard enough, a small grayish-white mop of hair could be seen leaning against the chair’s headrest.

Every person in the room had stopped whatever they were doing as soon as Grant had entered, and now they watched him with great interest. Whispers buzzed like a swarm of bees throughout the room, as the men and women leaned in to one another, all eyes unwavering from Grant.

He absent mindedly rubbed his thumb against the ring.

The woman who had helped open the double doors quickly walked to the desk and stepped behind it, whispering something to the person who sat there.

‘‘Brilliant!’’ a female voice announced in an impeccable British accent.

A woman emerged from behind the desk. She couldn’t have been more than forty-five and was short in stature, yet her nearly all-white hair made her look older. She stood tall—as tall as she could, anyway— as though a metal rod was holding her back straight. Large eyes peered down a pudgy nose over the rims of bifocal glasses to land on Grant, and she walked forward calmly but purposefully, and outstretched her hand.

‘‘Welcome, Mr. Borrows,’’ she said with a gleam in her eyes. ‘‘Welcome to the Common Room. My name is Morgan.’’

The Thresher shoved his motorcycle’s kickstand down, and stepped off into dirt.

Ahead he saw a honky-tonk bar that couldn’t have been any more stereotypical if it tried. Rust and mold covered the building’s exterior in a sort of patchwork of disgusting colors. A bright red neon light flashed the word ‘‘BEER’’ over the door, which was solid, looked rather thick, and had no window to see inside.

He opened the door. A wall of cigarette and cigar smoke, sweat, and stale alcohol rushed at him but did not slow him down.

The interior was even less appealing than the outside. Dingy lights hung low from overhead, illuminating a handful of pool tables, a jukebox, a bar and stools, and a few tables.

The dozen or so patrons turned as he entered, surveying the newcomer who dared intrude on their private haunt. They looked like feral dogs, sniffing to see who had invaded their territory. And not one of them failed to notice the scabbard hanging from his hip.

‘‘I’m looking for Mr. Odell,’’ the Thresher said, to everyone.

‘‘Don’t know nobody by that name, son,’’ called a filthy man in a white apron, standing behind the bar. ‘‘But weapons ain’t allowed in here.’’

The Thresher scanned the crowd. Nearly every man had the telling bulge of a shoulder gun holster under their jackets. The few who didn’t had large knives attached to their hips.

He locked eyes again with the bartender. ‘‘I know Mr. Odell is here.’’ He took a menacing step forward, but still spoke calmly. ‘‘And I don’t like repeating myself.’’

‘‘What d’ya want with ’im?’’ someone called out from a murky corner of the room.

‘‘A conversation,’’ the Thresher replied.

‘‘And if he don’t feel like talkin’?’’ another man shouted.

The Thresher slowly and carefully reached for the handle of his sword.

‘‘Then very soon, he will feel differently.’’

Grant was still speechless from his surroundings. It was a moment before he replied to Morgan. ‘‘Um, is ‘Morgan’ your first name or last?’’

‘‘Neither,’’ she replied, offering him a knowing smile. ‘‘May I call you Grant?’’

‘‘Okay.’’ He gestured. ‘‘My sister, Julie.’’

Morgan acknowledged Julie with a polite nod. ‘‘We have a great deal to discuss, Grant, yet I feel as though I know you already,’’ she said in her quick British clip. ‘‘Please, please have a seat.’’

But Grant found himself once again staring at the innumerable volumes covering the walls.

‘‘All these books . . .’’ he began, taking in his surroundings in wonder.

She gestured to a chair in front of the crackling fireplace. ‘‘Oh yes, they are mine. But we’ll get to that. Right now, we have more important matters to discuss.’’

Morgan joined him at the fire in a tall armchair that seemed to recognize her shape and weight. Julie and Hannah took seats not far from the fireplace as well, but it was clear that this conversation was meant for Grant and Morgan. The elder woman watched him intently, waiting for him to speak.

‘‘Who are you people?’’

‘‘We are those who must withdraw from society in order to survive it,’’ replied Morgan. ‘‘Like you, we have all undergone a drastic change to everything we know. For many of us, secluding ourselves was the only remaining option if we wished to conduct normal lives. The world does not welcome us anymore, so we have
made
a place where we can belong, here, together. In this place, far from the cares of civilization, we are safe.’’

‘‘Sounds pretty good to me,’’ Grant said, attempting a lighthearted chuckle. ‘‘Where do I sign up?’’

But Morgan was somber. ‘‘That luxury is not available to you.’’

‘‘Why not?’’

‘‘Because . . .’’ she hesitated, savoring this moment, as though she had waited a lifetime for it . . .

‘‘Because you are the Bringer.’’

19

‘‘The what?’’ Grant asked dumbly.

‘‘Your entire world has changed,’’ Morgan said in her polite diction, the smile gone from her face, replaced by a furrowed brow of concentration. She was concentrating on him, studying his every response and facial tic.

Her statement wasn’t a question.

Grant looked down at his feet. He’d liked this woman instantly, and yet . . . there was a lingering sense of perception about her that made him crumple under her gaze.

‘‘Yes, it has,’’ he said.

‘‘You feel like a doormat in a world of boots, I imagine. It began with this,’’ she said, producing her right hand. A sparkling gold ring rested on her middle finger, with an inset burgundy gemstone.

He nodded, then glanced briefly around the room. The others watched with rapt attention, some of them nervously stroking their own rings.

Morgan stared at his ring for a long moment, then shook her head in . . . was that wonder?

‘‘I know you have millions of questions. Or quite possibly more.’’ Her soft eyes twinkled as her face became round and welcoming again. ‘‘I am afraid I do not have quite that many answers, but I will tell you all that I can. First, I wonder if you would tell
me
something.’’

‘‘Okay,’’ he replied tentatively.

‘‘How have you been sleeping of late?’’

‘‘I haven’t.’’

‘‘Quite,’’ she nodded thoughtfully. ‘‘‘And thereby hangs a tale.’ You tell yourself the nightmares come from the
trauma
you have endured.’’

It wasn’t a question, but he answered anyway. ‘‘Yeah.’’

Her round eyes were stern, but he detected a hint of compassion in them. ‘‘When the truth is that you’ve learned very quickly how to keep yourself busy, running headlong from one task to the next. No time for sitting idle and putting genuine thought into how you feel. Oh no, can’t have that. Because
that
is more frightening than anything in your nightmarish dreams.’’

Grant wanted to argue with this logic but found that he couldn’t.

‘‘Yes, I understand you all too well, Grant,’’ she said with a gentle smile, as if reading his mind. ‘‘We’ve never met, of course. I simply recognize a familiar pattern.’’

‘‘So you have trouble sleeping, too?’’

Morgan smiled again. ‘‘As Hamlet said, ‘There’s the rub.’ I
do not
sleep. Ever. Grant,
all
of us here have been through precisely what you’re facing now. We know every feeling, every fear, every ridiculous notion that has crossed your mind since this began.
Nothing
makes sense to you right now, does it?’’

He shook his head.

She took a deep breath and never moved her eyes away from his. ‘‘I like to begin by telling my own story. It seems to help those who come here to know that their experience was not as uncommon as they think.’’

She leaned back in the chair and collected her thoughts. ‘‘It happened rather inconspicuously, really. In my former life, I was a librarian working at the London Library, near St. James Park. As I was leaving work one day, I stopped in the rest room. I caught my reflection in the mirror while washing my hands . . . and I screamed. The reflection I saw was not my own. And a foreign voice was screaming. I had a different face, different clothes. My purse was gone, and had been replaced by a different one, sitting in the same spot on the counter where I’d left mine. No one else entered nor left the rest room while I was inside, so I opened the purse. Within, I found a photo I.D. that matched the woman in the mirror, and a set of keys I didn’t recognize.’’

He nodded. This sounded very familiar.

‘‘After a great deal of study and investigation, I eventually came upon a few others who had also experienced ‘the Shift,’ as we call it. Most of us had nowhere to go, and many were so traumatized by the shaking of the foundations of their very existence that they lived in mortal fear of what might happen to them next. After all, if one’s identity is so malleable, so vulnerable, that it can be taken away in a heartbeat . . . then
anything
is possible. So I decided to create a haven where those like us could gather and be safe. Eventually . . . we found this place.’’

She grew silent, allowing Grant time to process this.

‘‘How many are here?’’

Morgan’s shoulders rose in a small shrug. ‘‘Perhaps fifty or sixty at any given time. It varies. This building was constructed to hold more than two hundred, but we’ve never reached even half that capacity. Still most who find their way here never leave.’’

‘‘But why?’’

‘‘You
know
why. They want a place to bury their heads and hope the world will not fall apart on them again. You remember that feeling? That cold ache in the pit of your stomach when you first realized that everything you know had irrevocably changed, forever?’’

‘‘I remember,’’ he replied. ‘‘But I can’t imagine just deciding to run away and hide—not even
trying
to find out what happened and why.’’

‘‘Of course you can, dear boy,’’ she replied calmly. ‘‘You considered it yourself in those first few moments after the Shift. We all do. It’s
terrifying
to see everything you are and everything you know, stripped away in a single moment. Your very flesh and blood has been replaced, and some find it very easy to lose their entire identity to that. When the world caves in, you contemplate throwing in the towel. That is the first reaction we all share.’’

He thought back to his own experience that first day.

‘‘Do not kid yourself, Grant,’’ she said with sad, compassionate eyes. ‘‘All that separates you from my friends here is a thin line spread across a scant few seconds. Each of us decides in those first moments: run and hide, or press on. But we all began at the same intersection.’’

He looked down at the tiny scar on his wrist that Julie had made, then raised his head to meet her eyes. An entire conversation passed silently between them in that look.

Never give up. Never give in. Never surrender to anger or despair
.

‘‘As I was saying,’’ Morgan continued, ‘‘most, once they come here, decide to stay. Some, like your friend Hannah, come and go as they wish. Our door is always open to those like us, who have nowhere else to go. Often, many of them will gather their intellects together—which are considerable, given the fact that everyone here is a
genius
of one type or another—and spend their time quite literally deliberating and sorting out the vast mysteries of the universe. They call themselves the Loci.’’

‘‘An asylum full of geniuses,’’ Grant mused. ‘‘Genius Loci, I get it. And have they turned up
answers
to any of life’s big mysteries?’’

‘‘They have.’’

‘‘Then why not share their answers with the world?’’

Morgan gave a sad smile. ‘‘It is easier to
learn
about the world than try to save it, is it not?’’

Then she sat forward on her chair, bowing her head. He thought she was praying or concentrating at first, but then saw the muscles on her neck were clenched tight. And she was squeezing her eyelids together.

‘‘Morgan!’’ Hannah cried.

‘‘I’m all right, Hannah,’’ Morgan whispered. ‘‘Don’t make a fuss.’’ She massaged her temples for a few moments as Hannah edged out of her chair, prepared to jump to the rescue. Morgan finally opened her eyes and sat back in the chair. She looked sideways at Hannah, who was still standing. ‘‘But
you
are
not
all right. You have been electrocuted. Severely, from the looks of it. You should see a doctor.’’