I?”
I sighed and nodded. I knew that Conrad didn’t really blame me. That he was just as scared and clueless as I was. There was no way I could explain that by doing this, I might help our father as well as myself, not without Conrad thinking I’d succumbed to iron poisoning and gone mad again. It was better that he was irritated with me.
“I’m on your side,” Conrad grumbled. “Not that you seem to want me there most of the time.”
“Listen,” Cal said. “Nobody is against anybody. How about we all go inside? Chang said he’d gotten things mostly ready.” He looked at me. “That is, if you’re still sure you want to do this.”
“Yes,” I said, though I wasn’t sure now. I was terrified, both of becoming like the doctor and of the possibility that I would reach the Deadlands and wouldn’t be able to find Dean. Or that I would find him and he wouldn’t recognize me, would just be one of the shredded souls Chang had spoken of. Or that we’d both get trapped, and I’d die for good, a soul without a body, stuck as Dean was on the other side.
“That’s good, then.” Cal always knew when I was lying, but he never called me on it. He never forced me to feel any weaker or more scared than I already did. That was why he was my best friend, and always would be.
Inside, I could hear a clicking and whirring from the back of the shop, where the doctor’s machine resided. My Weird prickled in response, sensing its potential to reach between the worlds.
I ignored it. To try to manipulate machines would just result in a stabbing headache and a nosebleed. My true power was the Gates. It had been nice, to be able to fix things purely with my mind, but that wasn’t who I was any longer.
I wasn’t anyone I recognized. I shivered as I thought of the vial Lei had given me, the weight of it in my palm. Soon, I wouldn’t even be alive. I tried to look brave, even though on the inside I was shaking with fear.
“All right, everything appears to be operational,” Chang said when he saw me. I glanced over the cube wall and saw that the doctor’s bed was empty.
“Where is he?” I said. Chang’s mouth tightened.
“Upstairs, sleeping it off. If he knew we were holding another seance he’d raise a fuss, and we don’t need that.”
“No,” I agreed.
Chang pointed to a chair hooked up to the apparatus and took a seat in another chair, on the opposite side. “Sit. The copper will conduct your body’s natural electricity and put you in tune with the device.”
I sat, and felt a prickle across my exposed skin. The Tesla coil hummed and arced, and Cal and Conrad kept their distance.
There was so much to say to both of them, more than I could possibly express. If this was truly the last time we would be together, there was no way I could tell them everything.
I resolved to act as if it wasn’t, as if I’d wake up, and everything would be fine and we’d have all the time in the world.
“Ready as we’ll ever be,” Chang said. “I’m going to ensure everything is working correctly.”
I took the vial from my pocket and placed it next to the aethervox assembly. Chang eyed it.
“And what is that?”
“Lei Xiang gave it to me. She said it’ll stop my heart for a few minutes, so as long as someone is there to bring me back.…” I rubbed my arms, already feeling cold. “No permanent damage to the body.”
“Good,” Chang said. “That’s good. Don’t worry, I’ve had a lot of experience reviving people. And I’ll make sure your body is looked after while your soul is floating.”
“Conrad and Cal will, too,” I said. “You can trust them, if the situation gets bad.”
“As much as I trust anyone, then,” Chang said with a tight smile. He turned on the aethervox, acting as if everything were normal, so I tried to take my cue from him. The record spun lazily, needle not dropped. “How it works is, you take the poison on my signal. I’ll only have a few seconds to hook you into the reader, so I need to be precise.”
I nodded. “All right.”
Chang examined his instruments and adjusted a few dials on the panel in front of him. “Here we go …,” he murmured to no one except himself.
I felt a hum rise in the room as the invisible energy of the aether crackled. The coil began to arc faster, the hum overriding everything, even the shouts and sounds from the street.
“Get ready,” Chang told me. “And do exactly as I say. I’ll resuscitate you, and if it works, you’ll be alive, but you won’t wake up until I unhook you.”
I reached out and gripped the vial. It was cool to the touch, and the liquid inside vibrated along with everything else in the room.
Chang dropped the needle onto the record. “It’s starting,” he said, and over the hum I heard the barest whisper, the sound of a human voice.
Another joined in, screaming incoherently, as if they were being tortured beyond all ability to endure. I shuddered, watching my breath frost as the temperature in the room plummeted at least twenty degrees.
“It’s a side effect,” Chang said. “Of opening a passage between this world and the Deadlands. It’s cold there.” He cut a glance at me, and I tried to ignore the voices, of which there were more and more—children laughing, women crying, an endless cacophony of pleas, pain and denial.
“We call them whispers,” Chang said, his voice cutting through my growing horror. “Just snippets of soul that haven’t quite made it to the Deadlands, trapped in some sort of space between here and there. The doctor and I were never able to quantify. Ignore them—they can’t hurt you.”
“Can’t we do something?” I said. The screams raked across my ears like claws, until I would have done anything to make them stop.
“No,” Chang said, turning a final dial. “They’re lost to us. Nobody can reach them. Neither in the Deadlands nor any other world. They’re little more than echoes, really.”
The record spun faster, the needle cutting into the wax, saving the whispers’ words for posterity.
Chang checked his levels and then nodded to me. “Go ahead,” he said loudly, over the crying and wailing. “If you still want to.”
I’d never wanted anything less, but I also didn’t want to show my fear to Chang and the others. I unscrewed the vial quickly and tilted it to my lips. The glass rim was cold, like a snowflake landing on my tongue.
The poison itself tasted horrible, like something left buried in the ground for a long time, then dug up and fermented. It coated my tongue with a sick flavor and sent a feverish heat down my throat.
I gagged as I swallowed, and to my horror couldn’t stop gagging. My airway closed off and the most horrible spasms shot through my stomach. I did panic then, trying to stand, and knocking Chang’s control panel askew.
“Help me,” he snapped at Cal, who ran to my side and pinned my arms down.
I was dying, there was no doubt about it. I could feel each piece of me shutting down and drifting away as the pain intensified, replacing all thoughts and feelings except panic.
But this was the way it had to be, for me and for Dean. For everything.
Chang laid me flat on the wooden plank near the machine and started hooking leads to me. I saw the long flash of an IV needle but didn’t feel it pierce my skin. I couldn’t feel anything now, could see nothing but the purple glow of the Tesla coil.
“She’s convulsing!” Cal cried. I could barely distinguish his voice from the whispers, which had gotten so loud I thought they might split my skull. “Do something!”
“Nothing to do,” Chang said. “She’s got to die for this to work.”
Something flickered in and out of my vision, and I saw a woman in the sort of garb Lei had worn when she was trying to scam us standing over me, reaching for me, her nails jagged and the tips of her fingers bloody.
I tried to scream, but it died in my throat as I became aware that the woman wasn’t the only person in the room. The machine was surrounded by black and silver figures, all of them wavering as if they were underwater.
