JUNE 2, LATE MORNING
Holy crap. The darkness. It’s gaining strength, feeding itself, pulling power from a place I can’t see, from I place I haven’t dared look.
But when I woke from my last nightmare, I knew: I need to confront the darkness, now, before it’s too late. Because as the darkness grows stronger, I’m growing weaker, probably because I don’t sleep—at least not well. Sleep is a full-on war, waged in the dark. Waged with the dark. Something has to give, and I don’t want it to be me.
If the darkness wins, I’ll lose.
I’ll lose me.
I’ll be gone, lost to the infinite blackness, to the darkness between—like Sy, like others I never met. Now I know that the Wall wasn’t always true. That a check didn’t always mean that person made it back, or made it through; it just meant that person caught a gate. Sy was proof of that.
So many things we thought were true on Nil were wrong, or at least not completely right.
But me, I’m still desperate for the truth. About Nil’s past, about why Paulo stayed. About what lives in the darkness. Maybe my curiosity is genetic, like my recklessness, because now I can’t help wondering what will happen if I turn toward the dark, rather than away from it. Maybe if I reach into the darkness on my terms, maybe I’ll see what’s calling me, and why. And then I can beat whatever it is, because I’ll finally know what I’m up against.
Part of me knows that’s insane, like lock-me-up-in-a-padded-room crazy.
But the other part of me thinks it might work. Even better, I’ll make my stand during the day. Confronting the darkness in daylight seems safer than a meeting held in the dark. The light will be my edge, my weapon. So today, when the sun rises, I’m going to face the dark. Maybe I’ll even figure out what it wants. Because the darkness wants something; I just don’t know what.
It wants you, my subconscious hisses.
No. I play my own devil’s advocate. But maybe it wants something from me.
The distinction seems critical, like the answers. Knowledge brought more than power; it offered freedom—at least it had on Nil.
The only thing holding me back is fear. And not just any fear, one in particular: I fear I created it, that the darkness actually comes from within me, born of the void created by Dex’s death. That the darkness is a manifestation of guilt. That it’s all in my head.
I fear that if I look into the darkness, I’ll see me.
But the calm, resilient part of my mind reassures me I’m sane, and the fierce part of my soul—the part that helped me survive Nil—agrees. Somehow I’m certain that the darkness of my dreams is real: that it’s foreign and lethal and not to be ignored. That it’s a remnant of Nil. One I brought back with me, a shadow of that last gate.
So maybe, in the end, I just need to acknowledge it and say good-bye. Because if I’m the one who brought it back, then I need to be the one to let it go.
I have a plan. It involves a nap. And it’s happening today.
As soon as Rives leaves for Marseilles to see friends, I’ll banish the darkness for good. End of story.
I feel better already.
My name is Skye Bracken, and this is the truth that will set me free.
* * *
Two hours later, I knew I’d made a terrible mistake.
The darkness poured in just as I knew it would, a greedy blackness writhing with life and invisible whispers, begging me to come closer. I crept to the edge, sensing the invisible line, taking the utmost care not to cross it with any shred of myself. All I could see was black. Endless, terrifying black.
Before I could look deeper, I felt the line bend.
The darkness surged with victory, reaching for me with sinewy claws, spilling across in roiling ribbons of sentient blackness—and the instant the darkness breached the line, the whispers turned deafening. I lurched away, too slow, too late. The darkness brushed my shoulder with icy fingers and the profound depth of it was shocking.
I felt it.
The whole of it. The essence of it. The want.
It wanted me.
The darkness held me in place, binding me with invisible ties. I screamed for Rives, but the darkness absorbed the sound; it devoured my desperation, my plea, everything—even the timbre of my voice, as though all were a preview of the full course of me.
A pinprick of light flared.
I was the bug under the microscope, caught between the light and the dark, a microscopic speck in time and space and something much greater than me. I could still feel the line, still feel the edge of me. I could almost see that crucial boundary, reflected in the wisp of light.
The light pulsed, once; the chorus of voices converged into a single clear tone: desperate, and unquestionably human.
I leaned closer, trying to see—and abruptly, the line thinned. The darkness snarled, the light faded, and I had a moment of complete clarity that if I fully crossed that line, I would not come back.
Like I’d flipped a switch, I fought with all I had, lashing out with muscles and bone and blood and will. I broke free; I woke up. I lay alone on the bed in the sun-filled flat, covered in a thin sheen of sweat. Still shaking, still wanting.
Now that I’m awake, why do I still feel it?