It was like falling into death.
The pool stank of open graves, of maggot-infested flesh, worming down his gullet, choking him, pulling him in. He burst out again, grappling for something solid, his legs thrashing into nothing. He found the lip of the pool, clutched at it.
“Not today,” said Hanson, grinding a foot down onto his knuckles. He let go, barely able to keep his head above water.
“Pan, help,” he said, coughing, wheezing, kicking.
“It’s too late,” Pan said. “Whatever you do, don’t forget what to deal for.”
Marlow tried to reach for her but the pool held him like it had fingers. He felt something glide past his foot, an icy grip around his ankle, and he screamed. The darkness took advantage, sliding into his mouth. Something latched onto his arm, like there was an army of corpses beneath the surface, and he fought against it, floundering.
“Do not struggle,” said Seth. “It cannot hurt you.”
“Oh, it hurts you,” Hanson said, one foot on the edge. “It’s a nightmare in there. Did they tell you that some people never even make it out of the pool?”
What?
“You’re such an asshole, Hanson!” Pan yelled. “Marlow, ignore everything the Engine shows you, they’re lies, it will try to trick you.”
Whatever was holding him began to pull, tugging hard on his skin as he thrashed on the surface of the pool. He was hyperventilating, his lungs exploding as he tried to take a breath. But nothing was happening. He felt his body begin to slide into unconsciousness, his eyes rolling back in their sockets. The fluid was leaking into them, blades of black light carving up his vision. Through them he saw Hanson grinning. This couldn’t be the last sight he would ever see, it couldn’t be.
“Shut it out,” Pan said. “Keep your wishes in your head, don’t forget, never forget.”
“And whatever you do,” Hanson said, leaning toward him, his words muted by the liquid that burrowed into his ears, “don’t think about Pan with no clothes on.”
The invisible fingers reeled him under, the whole world turning black. He struggled, feeling himself dragged deeper and deeper, faster and faster, the fluid boiling past his head, his stomach in knots. He felt like he was being sucked into a vortex, something that would pull him to the very center of the Earth.
Or even deeper than that, something that will drag you to the very depths of hell.
He opened his mouth and water flooded into his lungs, cold and choking but somehow letting him breathe. A face appeared in the darkness, Danny, a smile blazing out beneath his combat helmet. It was the Danny he knew from the photograph, exactly the same—sunglasses, the armored car, the tents in the background. He’d died eight days after the photograph was taken.
But I don’t have to, he said. Marlow, please, save me. Let me come home.
Couldn’t he do it? Couldn’t he do this one good thing? Bring him back?
It’s so easy, just a wish, just think it. I want to see Mom again, Marly. Take me to her.
Marlow nodded, then shook his head. There was something wrong with his brother’s smile, it was too wide, his teeth like broken glass.
“You’re not him,” Marlow said. “You’re not Danny.”
His brother’s smile twisted into an expression of horror, his mouth opening too wide. His face began to peel away like old wallpaper, maggots and mealworms squirming out from beneath his flapping skin. Then he was gone, and Charlie was there—or at least a flyblown mass of jellied meat that might once have been him.
You left me to die, he said, one of his lips peeling loose, rolling wetly down the front of his shirt. You left me to fall in the river and drown. Wish me okay, Marlow. That’s what friends do for each other. All it takes is a wish.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he almost gave in, almost wished for him to be safe back on Staten Island. Then Pan’s words blazed back into his mind: Ignore everything it shows you, they’re lies, it will try to trick you. He reached into his memory, everything so far away, nothing real. But there were words there.
“I want to be able to breathe normally. I want to be as strong as ten men. I want to run faster than sound.”
It was stupid, ludicrous, like a kid before Christmas. But he kept saying them, over and over, a mantra that held the Engine at bay. There was another thought in his head, planted there by Hanson—Pan, looking at him and smiling, reaching out and touching his face. She wasn’t wearing a scrap of clothing and the sight of her was almost enough for him to forget where he was.
“No,” he said, repeating his wishes again, and again, forcing the words from his lips.
Somewhere—it seemed like miles away, but how could it be, the pool was only small—the darkness seemed to be parting, great black clouds billowing to the side. A crack of thunder pulsed through the water, felt rather than heard, like the skull-crushing blast of a depth charge. There was something there, beyond the shadows. It was a figure, one that was surely far too big to fit here, one that might have been as vast as a mountain. Marlow turned away. He didn’t want to look, but the invisible hands gripped his head, forcing him to see. There was something wrong with the figure, like it was radiating darkness, waves of invisible black light that broke against Marlow’s skull. It was a monstrous bag of bones and skin, peering down at him with a clutch of eyes as watery as egg whites. It seemed to radiate cruelty.
This is what you desire?
There were no words in his head but he understood what was being asked of him. He didn’t want this anymore, didn’t want anything to do with this thing, but he knew it was too late. Some people never even make it out of the pool. Those who changed their minds? Those who didn’t wish for anything? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. He just wanted out, away from this nightmare and the corpse hands that held him.
“I want to be able to breathe normally,” he was almost screeching. “I want to be as strong as ten men. I want to run faster than sound.”
And Pan, I want her to love me. His brain added without his permission.
It is done, said the wordless voice in his head. It is yours, and the price is your soul.
And with that thought came an unbearable sadness, a huge, gaping, lonely absence that made him feel as if everybody he had ever loved had died. He howled in despair, clutching at his stomach, trying to hold himself in. He realized that his arms were free and he began to paddle upward, desperately pushing himself toward the surface. His lungs were two shriveled sacks inside his chest, empty of everything but pain. He kicked and struggled his way through the liquid, suddenly bursting through the top of the pool into a riot of color and noise.
Hands reached for him, dragging him out, and he clung on to them with everything he had. There was a cry of pain, then he was dropped onto the stone floor.
“Let go, Marlow, let go, easy now.”
Marlow released his grip, the world swimming into focus. Seth was there, his face contorted with pain. Pan was next to him, one hand on the old man. Marlow coughed, spitting the last dregs of black water from his mouth. They landed on the floor, wriggling like worms, squirming their way back toward the pool as if they were living things. The sight of them—hundreds of droplets swarming over each other—made Marlow gag. He retched until his stomach was empty. He tried to push himself up but the whole world was swimming.
“Wait there,” said Pan. “Marlow, don’t move, give us a second.”
She looked flushed, the color on her cheeks making her even more beautiful than before. Marlow lay there on the stone, tasting the acid in his mouth. Hanson and his two douches stood exactly where they had before, those crap-eating grins still plastered over their faces.
Marlow turned back to Seth and Pan. The old man was shaking his wrist, still grimacing.
“That’s some grip you have there, Marlow,” he said.
“What?” Marlow asked, looking at his hand. Nothing had changed, he didn’t feel any different.
Wait …
He sucked in a breath and he could have been standing at the top of a mountain, his lungs full of crisp, clean, oxygenated air. He breathed out slowly, not wanting to jinx it, then tried again. It was like it was the first time he had ever truly taken a breath and he almost laughed with the joy of it. “I can breathe,” he said, grinning. “Holy crap, I can breathe.”
“You can probably wrestle a bear too,” said Seth, and Marlow understood what must have happened—Seth offering him a hand out of the pool, Marlow grabbing his arm, squeezing hard. He flexed his fingers. It was impossible, right? How could he have the strength of ten men?
“No way,” he said, looking at Pan. She was redder than ever, like she was flustered. She stared back at him, biting her bottom lip. She looked different, softer somehow, like her icy exterior had started to melt. Marlow had to turn away, his own cheeks flaring. If he wasn’t careful, then he was going to have to throw himself back into the pool.
“How long was I in there?” he asked, pushing himself to his feet.
“A second, less really,” said Seth. “You went under and came up instantly. There is no time inside the Engine. My guess is it felt quite a bit longer to you.”
“A second?” said Marlow. But he’d been down there for minutes. “It can’t be.”
“How did you do, doggy?” Hanson said. “What did you wish for?”
“Go on, tell us you brought the dead back,” said Bullwinkle. “Time travel, something unbreakable. Make our day. We love seeing the demons eat rookies for breakfast.”
“You guys make me sick,” said Pan.
“Poor little princess,” said Hanson, pouting.
Marlow stepped forward, feeling like a new person, feeling like somebody had injected him with adrenaline, stripped out everything that made him weak.
“Why don’t you do as she says and piss off,” he said, his heart drumming like he had an engine of his own. He felt like a machine, like he could do just about anything.
Hanson raised his hands in mock surrender.
“Don’t worry, I’m going. This bores me. I’ll leave you two together, let the puppy have his bitch.”
Last. Straw.
Marlow threw himself at Hanson, feeling the world suddenly slow, like it had run out of momentum. It was as if everybody else had frozen. Only he was moving, sprinting across the stone, his fist balling up. He unleashed a punch, aimed right at Hanson’s nose. Only then did time suddenly catch up with itself, snapping back with a sudden lurch.
Marlow’s fist connected with Hanson like two cars colliding, the impact so powerful that a shock wave blasted out across the chamber, kicking the surface of the pool into a frenzy. Hanson collapsed onto one knee with the force of it, his glasses splintering into shrapnel and exploding out across the stone.
“Whoa whoa whoa!” Pan said, running to Marlow and grabbing his arm. “Christ, that’s enough!”
Marlow looked down at his fist, suddenly afraid of what he was capable of. Hanson shook his head, picking glass from his face, then slowly stood. What Marlow saw there made him stagger back.
He had no eyes. They were completely gone, leaving two red, ragged holes in his face. Somehow, though, they still seemed to burn into Marlow like blowtorches. Hanson straightened his collar and then smiled, the skin around his nose already starting to bruise.
“Hanson, he’s new, he didn’t know what he was doing,” Pan said, maneuvering herself in front of Marlow like a shield. There was a tremor in her voice that was even more unsettling than Hanson’s eyeless death stare. “You were being an ass—just call it even, okay?”
“Like I said,” Hanson replied, running a long, pink tongue around his lips, then spitting blood. He blinked, his eyelids flapping wetly, uselessly over the gaping pits in his face. “You two deserve each other. But try that again, dog, and I’ll skin you alive.”
He studied Marlow a moment more, a fly scuttling out of one of his eye sockets, buzzing up into the dark. Then he turned and walked up the stairs, his two lieutenants sloping after him. Pan waited until they had disappeared through the door before she turned to Marlow, letting out a long, ragged breath.
“Oh god, I thought he was going to kill you,” she said.
“I could have—”
“No, you couldn’t,” she said. “Not him. Not even if he wasn’t under contract. Jesus, Marlow, if you’d hit a normal person like that you would have sent their head spinning out into the middle of the Engine.”
He looked at his hands, swallowing uncomfortably.
“You’re not you anymore,” Pan said, fanning her face with her hand like she’d just run a marathon. “You’ve got to remember that. Hug someone too hard and they’ll burst. High-five somebody and you’ll snap their wrist.” She swore. “Man, maybe we should have thought this through.”
“But I don’t feel any different.”
“You are,” said Pan, staring out into the mechanical ocean. It had once again fallen silent and still, its work done. “You’ve got that inside you.”
The thought made him feel sick, made him itch like he no longer had veins but pipes, not bones but levers and springs. He closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths—the air sliding into his lungs, crystal clear. When he opened them again he was surprised to see Pan standing right in front of him, squirming like she was uncomfortable, so close that he could feel her breath on his face. His heart flipped in his chest, so carried away that it took it a few seconds to settle back into a rhythm.
“What?” was all he had time to say before Pan leaned in and planted her lips on his, kissing him. She opened her mouth and he felt her tongue dart into his, exploring. He stood there, no idea how to respond, his brain screaming ohmygodkissherbackyouidiot, and he did, his hands gently resting on her elbows, the lightest of touches, like she was a bird he didn’t want to startle.
He wasn’t sure how long it went on for. There was no time here either, the moment so unexpected, so incredible, that it seemed to have lifted them out of the world into their own ageless, private universe. Eventually Pan broke free, stepping back, her mouth still open, her tongue running across her own lips. She stared at Marlow like he was the most desirable thing in the world, her pupils so dilated that she didn’t look real.
Then her face crumpled into a look of fury. She swung her fist and punched Marlow in the mouth, hard enough to rock his head back. He staggered away, yelping.
“You bastard!” she said. “You wished for it, didn’t you? You wished for me.”
“No!” he said, retreating as she advanced. “I didn’t … I … It wasn’t my fault, it was Hanson, he planted the idea in my head, please, I would never—”
She threw herself at him and he did his best to shield his face, only to feel her lips on his again, her arms around his neck, pulling him closer. He couldn’t resist, his brain struggling to make sense of what was going on. He kissed her back, then it felt as if an atomic bomb had been detonated in his stomach. He dropped, nursing his groin where Pan had kneed him. It felt like he was on fire down there and he groaned, everything turning into a blur through his watering eyes.
“Enjoy your gifts while you can,” said Pan. “But that’s one wish that even the Engine can’t grant. Seth, cancel that contract right now. And you.” She loomed over him, a finger jabbing repeatedly into his forehead. “You better not tell a goddamned soul about this.”
Then she was gone, leaving him with the powers of a superman but crying like a baby.