The Fray Theory: Resonance (18 page)

Leaving
Neve behind in the hallway, Romer cautiously enters Galen’s loft. The place is
completely ransacked. All the furniture has been gutted, the stuffing spewing
out like entrails of road-kill. Tables have been flipped over, drawers, boxes,
and containers have been purged of their contents, and broken pieces of antique
artifacts are scattered all over the floor.

This was not a burglary.

The culprits must’ve been
looking for something specific. Could it have been the book Neve said the cops took
from Dylan’s?

But this doesn’t look like
a police raid either. If it was, the place would’ve been sealed off.

Neither a burglary, nor a
raid. And yet, it is both.

Stepping over and around
the ravaged remains, Romer crosses the living area and enters the kitchen in the
back.

It’s more or less in the
same shape as the rest of the loft. And there’s still no sign of Galen.

Was he even here when all
of this happened?

Romer retracts his steps
to be on his way, but a small noise draws his attention towards the far end of
the kitchen.

Is it Galen? Is he in
hiding?

Romer cautiously
approaches what he assumes to be the pantry, tiptoeing around the broken shards
of glass and porcelain. He tightens his grip on his knife, just in case his hunch
proves to be horribly wrong.

Keeping his distance, he
steels himself and pushes on the door.

It swings open to reveal
an enormous beehive: a double-height cylindrical cellar, home to some of the
world’s finest vintage wines.

The way all the bottles
point to the center of the room reminds Romer of miniature war cannons. And on
the ground and along the wall, giant wine barrels lay on their bellies in the
shape of a crescent.

At the far end of the
room, Romer notices a small puddle of wine. But it isn’t pooled anywhere near a
spout, which makes him wonder if the spill
is
in fact, wine.

σ

Neve
lingers in the door frame of Galen’s entrance, one foot inside the unit, the
other out in the hallway.

The state of the loft is
absolutely tragic. Nothing shy of a massacre.

These horribly mutilated
objects were relics with mystery. History.
And now they are sprawled
across the floor in pieces, robbed of their integrity.

Cops wouldn’t stoop this
low—ravaging priceless artifacts like savages.

This mess is too hideous
not
to be personal.

Neve wonders if the culprits
responsible for this mess would have unleashed the same hell at Dylan’s, had they
failed to recover Galen’s book.

And she wonders about the
text Galen received, right before he abruptly terminated their session.

What could it have
possibly said that frightened him as much as it did?

Was it a warning? From whom?

The ding of the elevator nearly
makes her heart stop. But its doors remain shut.

Different floor
.

Neve exhales a huge sigh
of relief, and then steps into the loft and shuts the door behind her.

The last thing she needs
right now is for one of Galen’s neighbors to walk by and start bombarding her
with questions she won’t be able to answer.

It’s too weird being back here
already. Especially given the huge discrepancy in the loft’s condition.

Neve was standing right
here when Galen rushed back with
The Fray Theory
from down the hallway
to her left. And she remembers the door at the far end swinging shut behind
him.

She knows she should stay
put, but her curiosity is proving to be much more compelling than her fear of
consequence.

She looks in the direction
of the kitchen.

Detecting no signs of Romer,
she throws caution to the wind and ventures into the hallway towards what she
assumes to be Galen’s office.

She knocks out of
courtesy, and hearing no sound, opens the door to reveal what used to be a
quaint and charming study.

The state of this room is
more or less on par with the rest of the loft. But there is something unnerving
about it that Neve can’t seem to quite figure out.

Her heartbeat is rising up
to twice what it should be. Her insides are twisting tight enough to bend her
at the waist. But what could her insincts know that her brain has yet to
discover?

Remembering her promise to
Romer, she begins to back out of the room. But all of a sudden, she finds
herself pinned in place.

Neve’s eyes fill with awe
and wonder. She realizes what she’d initially registered as wallpaper, is in
fact a
gigantic
map—a meticulous, hand-drawn map of an ancient city with
a winding river snaking through the heart of it.

And it dawns on her that
she’s dreamt of not only this map, but this
entire room
last night,
before
she visited Galen’s home for the very first time.

She also remembers how in
her dream, regardless of what page she flipped to, ‘six’ was the number of the
page she landed on.

Come to think of it, the
number six also appeared in her dream of merging into a sea of identical cars.

Neve’s vision starts to
blur as she thinks of the beautiful stranger who’s been plaguing her dreams as
of late.

The mysterious apparition
who incited something ferocious in her at the cemetery, nearly costing Neve her
life.

And last night, when she
dreamt of this room, it was the very sight of him that made her scream her way
into consciousness.

He was standing right in
front of her—right there by that console with the vintage typewriter on it.

Just then, Neve notices a
small, white envelope in the typewriter’s paper rest, and walks over to take a
closer look.

It’s odd, how the entire room
is in shambles, and yet this envelope is resting delicately onto the paper
rest, completely undisturbed.

Was it put here
after
the break-in?

Neve picks it up and reads
the hand-written ‘N. K.’ designation at the bottom right corner. And although
the initials could belong to nearly anyone, she feels convinced this letter was
meant for
her
to find. And even if not, aren’t the initials a good
enough excuse for her to give into her curiosity?

She flips the envelope
over.

The wax used to seal it is
a deep, lapis blue. And the elegant impression that is stamped onto the wax
simply reads: ‘Q’.

Neve breaks through the
seal and retrieves what appears to be a personal letter.

The penmanship is beyond exquisite.
Aristocratic even. And it vaguely reminds Neve of the scribbled annotations she
discovered in Galen’s book.

My dear,

This letter is not a revelation, but a simple
reminder of what your soul already knows to be true.

Dreams are devoid of logic. They neither begin,
nor end. In dreams, we do not question reality. We bend the laws of physics,
and defy gravity. And I know it’s hard to believe, but you are not dreaming.

I have waited long for this day. For the day
your self-awareness transcends your physical limits. But awareness is worthless
without action. Talent, wasted without creation. Life, unlived without purpose.

You have a choice. You can either welcome your
calling, or settle for
mediocrity. Settle for dreams that are only
dreamt, destined never to come true.

And your dreams are of the kind, which must.

~Q

The inky letters on the
page blur into squiggles.

Welling up, Neve lowers
the letter with quivering hands, feeling as though she’s just recalled a deeply
buried memory.

She can’t imagine what’s
causing her to have such an emotional reaction… to such a vague letter from a
complete stranger.

And truth be told, she
doesn’t want to know.

Where the hell is Romer
?

Galen
is nowhere in sight. And with each passing second, Romer’s becoming more and
more convinced that the puddle he’s staring at in the back of the room, isn’t
wine.
He should grab Neve and get out
of here.
Now
.
But like a wiper-blade, a flash of black swoops
down across his vision and tightens around his neck.

Panicked, Romer drops his
Swiss Army Knife and reaches up to his throat, but a swift blow to the back of
his knees knocks him onto his shins.

Ridges of a man’s boot are
pushing down on his spine, but the thick cord around his neck is pulling him
back.

Romer pats the ground frantically,
but his knife is nowhere to be found. He reaches up to reduce the tension
around his neck, but he can’t seem to dig his fingers under the cord.

The throbbing in his
temples intensifies each time his heart pumps blood into his head. It feels
like someone is drilling a hole into his skull. The tension above his Adams
apple is making him gag, and his lungs are on the verge of collapsing.

He is frozen in a lethal
limbo and fast running out of hope. This is Isaac all over again.

As his blurry vision paves
the way for a black-out, something akin to an idea emerges in his mind.

His focus sharpens. His
senses heighten. He leans
forward into
the cutting sting of the cord, lowering himself as close to the ground as he
can tolerate.

And he feels the surge of
a faint vibration outside of himself. He’s felt it before, like a foreshock
before a seismic earthquake.

Romer concentrates his
will on what he needs to do. He lets the vibrations seep into him, and
then—with the mere thought of it—the wine bottles and the barrels lining the
perimeter EXPLODE.

With that, the crushing
pressure on Romer’s spine is lifted, and the tension around his throat, released.

Romer slips away and backs
off from his attacker.

And as tides of wine flood
the cellar, he watches a man in black—ravaged by the shards of glass lodged in
his skin—collapse into the shallow sea of aromatic garnet, floating face-down.

Heaving wet coughs, Romer
struggles to his feet with his eyes glued to his assailant. He watches him sway
from side to side as the dissipating waves of wine splash against his lifeless
body.

And all Romer can think of
is how he’d rather die than go back to prison.

σ

Neve
starts to back out of Galen’s study. It was a bad idea to come here—to have
involved Romer.

They should just—

Someone’s arm wraps around
her neck, and Neve instantly knows it isn’t Romer’s.

The chokehold is extremely
firm. Firm enough to snap her neck. And an explosion of terror rattles her as
she realizes snapping her neck might be
exactly
what her aggressor is
trying to do.

With that thought, her
body starts to fall asleep.

Shit
—
no
,
no
,
no
!

She is running out of
time. Once the prickliness starts to take over, it will be beyond excruciating
to lift a finger.

With the nagging numbness
in her flesh already compromising her, Neve pulls Dylan’s blade from her back
pocket.

A small jolt sends a rush
of prickliness through her arm, and she suspects having unwittingly sprung the
blade out.

She rotates the blade in
her hand, grips it firmly, and stabs her attacker in the leg.

His scream is terrifying.
But it’s almost as much a relief as the breath Neve manages to take before he
cuts off her air supply again.

Only this time, his grip
feels weaker.

Much
weaker.

The peppery prickliness
overcoming Neve’s flesh is excruciating. Her nerves are firing so violently
that even the smallest movements feel impossible.

But this is life or death.

She goes to pull the blade
out, but it seems to be lodged in her attacker’s bone.

So she twists it instead.

His second howl is deafening.
Murderous, even.

He grabs the back of Neve’s
neck and SLAMS her forehead into the wall.

A strangled grunt leaps out
the back of her throat.

He then clutches her jaw,
and BASHES the back of her head against the opposite wall.

At the verge of
collapsing, Neve’s knees give out from under her. But her aggressor tightens
his grip of her jaw, and pins her to the wall.

The darkness surrounding Neve’s
vision closes in, seeping into the black mask of the man holding her life in
his hands.

Neve searches his eyes for
a hint of compassion, for mercy, but what she finds instead is certainty:

He is going to kill her.

Help
—Neve grabs his wrist with both hands, but they
unclasp a moment later when he punches her in the gut.

He punches her again and
again, until a string of blood spurts from her mouth and vanishes onto his
black clothes.

Where are you
? Neve thinks of Romer as another punch lands on her
frail frame.

He wouldn’t leave me
…
He’d be here
.

Unless he couldn’t
.

With the thought of Romer in
peril, Neve’s heart quickens, pumping an overabundance of adrenaline through
her veins. The rush of prickliness paves the way for calm and clarity, and then
Neve is standing strong, her body tougher than wrought iron.

As the man in black
reaches for his weapon, Neve hears the hardwood floor creak, louder and louder,
until it suddenly collapses under her weight.

Neve’s hair floats up as
gravity pulls her through the floor. With her voice trapped in her throat, she
crashes into one floor after another, paving a vertical path all the way down
through the building.

Her plunge ends abruptly when
she crashes onto a hard surface, the earth-shattering impact shaking up the
space like a mild earthquake.

Neve lies amidst the
wreckage of her fall as debris pours from the oculus above.

As her density gradually
returns to normal, Neve starts to feel the bulging corners of the bed of rubble
underneath. With a weak grunt, she props herself up into a slouch, and looks
about what appears to be an underground parking lot. And behind her, within the
pile of rubble, she finds the man who attacked her lying on his back.

Without taking her eyes
off him, Neve shifts her weight onto all fours and backs away from him. But he
doesn’t even flinch.

Is he passed out
?
Faking it
?

Keeping her distance, Neve
rises to her feet and walks around him for a better look.

There is a film of dust
over his unblinking eyes. And blood, pooling at the base of his skull.

Neve chokes on her gasp
and backs away.

She can call it
self-defense. She can call it a freak accident. She can rationalize it any way
she likes, but when it comes down to it, she’s just killed someone.

Heavy stomping reaches her
ears from a nearby stairwell. She snaps out of remorse and dives down, rummaging
through the rubble for Dylan’s blade.

She salvages it from beneath
a broken plank, and in the process, also discovers her assailant’s weapon; the
gun he tried to pull on her, right before the floor collapsed under them both.

She grabs it and dashes
towards the parking lot exit, bursting through it.

σ

At
the sound of progressive crashes, Romer bursts out of the cellar, his drenched clothes
clinging to his body.

“Neve!?” he shouts as he makes
his way through the kitchen. “NEVE!?”

He reenters the living
space just as a pair of men in black step into the loft from the hallway.

Romer staggers to a stop,
bracketed by floor to ceiling libraries on either side of him. His eyes dart about
the space for something to use as a weapon, but there is nothing within reach except
fragments of things once whole.

Concealed in masks, the strangers
in black start to take aim.

At the sight of this,
Romer senses a faint vibration outside of himself, and time slows down to a
crawl.

He watches a pair of red
laser dots glide over the pillaged furniture towards him, and next thing he
knows, he is raising his hands to eclipse the red glare threatening to blind
him.

With this gesture of his
hands, hundreds of books fly off their shelves and start to assemble midair
like tiles. They snap together like a puzzle of mismatched rectangles, and
within seconds, Romer finds himself shielded behind a floating barrier of books.

A barrage patters on the other
side of the barrier.

Romer dives down and lands
at the foot of a spiral staircase.

Looking up, he remembers
that Galen’s loft is on the topmost floor of this building.

Like Dylan’s
.

With hope radiating from
his eyes, he springs to his feet and bolts up the stairs.

He emerges into Galen’s
bedroom with his eyes to the ceiling. But unlike Dylan’s apartment, there’s no
rooftop hatch to aid him in his escape.

It isn’t until he turns
and looks over the railing of the mezzanine that he realizes the book barrier
has already crumbled into a massive pile.

Where are they
?

Stomping draws his focus
to the staircase, and he once again finds himself in crosshairs.

Suddenly, the objects in
the room start to glitch. Some vanish and reappear in the exact same spot,
while others reappear slightly displaced.

It’s like flipping through
a flip-book—except the pictures are in a random order. The kind of chaos Romer
had always sensed, but never
seen
.

Within this state of flux,
he senses the shooter’s grip tightening around the trigger. And then—with a
silver glow radiating from his eyes—Romer’s mind throws his enemy back against
the wall.

The invisible force is so
powerful, however, that it pushes back onto Romer, thrusting him backwards.

The window his back
collides with shatters upon impact. And the air is suddenly fresh and cold.

Romer gawks at the
building’s exterior.

In trying to save his own
life, he's just expelled himself from a six-storey building!

His heart drops even
faster than he is, knowing in mere moments, all will fade to black.

Do something
!
DO SOMETHING
!

Further up the street, he spots
a black SUV. And it’s high enough to absorb most of his momentum.

Beckoned by his mind, the car
rips from its spot and charges down the street, leaving behind trails of burnt
plastic as it skids to catch Romer’s fall.

σ

Neve
bursts out of Galen’s parking lot and onto the main street, her mind and
heart racing one another.

What should she do!? Run?
Hide?

But Romer
—

The sound of glass shattering
draws her attention upwards, and she looks up to find Romer airborne, enveloped
by a cloud of glistening shards.

Merge
.

Her flesh starts to fall
asleep, prickly and painful. One by one, her Proxies snap onto her like
magnets, increasing her body’s density in a chain reaction.

She becomes denser and
heavier one infinitesimal jolt at a time, the pain more and more bearable with
each fusion.

And then, she is no longer
her-
self
.

She is her-
selves
—an
indestructible anchor who is connected to all shared dimensions.

She hears a soft groan,
and then DROPS by half a foot as the ground beneath her collapses into a wide
and shallow crater. But not once does she take her eyes off the silhouette
falling from the sky.

As though her will is
tangible, it pushes back up against Romer, decelerating his plunge. And then he
is suspended midair, close enough to reach out and touch her hand.

The
screech of skidding tires fills Neve’s ears, and she looks
down to find a black SUV charging at her in a solo stampede.

No
.

Neve turns on the balls of her
feet and sinks into a defiant stance, her ruby eyes glued to her impending
doom.

“NEVE!” Romer’s scream cuts
through her.

CRASH.

The car’s front caves in upon
impact, rippling like a collapsing accordion. The powerful collision wipes Neve
clean from under Romer, the backs of her feet scraping the asphalt as she resists
the momentum.