It was different this time.
Pan heard that familiar hiss of static, felt the pins-and-needles tingle of it. She lifted a hand—an arm, really, because she had no hand there. There was just the blunt stump of her wrist, trailing those same threads of color from the ground below, and trails of black liquid so dark they looked like cracks in the air. It was knitting her from the dead, once more, weaving her from the bones that lay there, from the dark metal that sat deeper, from that weird glass-tubed fluid that veined the hill.
I came back, she said to herself, knowing from the numbness that her face was only half formed. The memories slotted in like punch cards, one at a time and ridiculously clumsy. And they ended with Patrick’s hands on her, that awful tension in her neck, agony … and then nothing. I came back. And she could do nothing but groan inwardly because the enormity of it felt like it was about to swallow her whole. I came back.
“Easy,” said a voice. It was Marlow, or at least it sounded like him.
She opened her mouth, tried to speak, and released only dust. But he must have known what she needed.
“Uh … your real name is Amelia, we met when I saved your ass in an underground parking lot, and your greatest desire is for me to fall in love with you. See, it’s me.”
Go screw yourself, she tried to say. The pins and needles had moved to her feet and she wiggled her toes, feeling them form, feeling the dust suddenly gather between them. She tried to sit up but her body wasn’t strong enough.
“I’ve got somebody else here,” said Marlow. His voice sounded a million miles away and when she managed to blink him into focus she saw he was looking the other way.
“Who?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I’ll show you, but you gotta put some clothes on first.”
She rolled over, seeing that he’d dropped a couple of pieces of sackcloth beside her. She managed to sit up this time, draping one around her shoulders. It was as she was fumbling with the second piece that somebody stepped into her field of vision. Her face was so scarred that it took Pan a while to recognize it, and when she did she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Night?” she asked.
Night crouched down beside her and Pan flinched.
“It’s me,” said the other girl. “It’s me. First time I met you I was terrified, wouldn’t peek out from behind Herc’s back.”
“Don’t worry,” said Marlow. “She hasn’t tried to eat me.”
Night’s eyes caught the dying light, looked like they’d been cast in a blacksmith’s forge.
“I’m sorry,” Night said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to you in time.”
“With Patrick?” Pan shuddered as a phantom pain shot through her neck. She rubbed it, feeling a scar there. “What is that?”
“A memory,” Night said, scratching at the scars on her own neck. “Your body remembers. Every time, your body remembers.”
“Every time?” she asked.
“Every time hell kills you.”
She looked at Night, at her ravaged skin.
“How many times has it happened to you?” she asked. In the pause that followed Pan felt her heart grind into a rhythm.
“Too many,” said Night eventually.
“You decent yet?” asked Marlow. Pan wrapped the second piece of cloth around her waist, knotting it. Her skin felt the same as it had the last time she’d woken here, but the patterns of metal there were different. She studied them, tracing a finger along the marbled striations and feeling the ridge of them. When she’d finished she looked past Marlow, past Night, to see that she was back on the bone mountain where she’d first arrived.
No, it was similar, she realized, but this, too, was different. She couldn’t see the city beneath them, just a desert of dust lined with those black conduits. Night followed her gaze, nodding. She started to say something, then swallowed painfully.
“Sorry, it has been a long time since … since I spoke.”
“Five hundred days,” Marlow said before she had a chance to ask.
“More,” said Night. “Much more than that. But I know this place. I have seen it work. These places, these graveyards, they are like … like petri dishes.”
“Like what?” said Marlow.
“Or, I don’t know, grow bags. For tomatoes.”
“Right…” said Marlow, raising a copper-brushed eyebrow.
“These are mountains of the dead,” said Night. “Bones and flesh, hair, DNA, I guess. Everything you need to make a person. Plus this stuff,” she dug into the dirt with her toes, revealing a glass tube filled with black. “No idea what it is.”
It sounded crazy, but it made perfect sense. What had Meridiana told them, back in her lair? That the human body contained elements, metals, stardust. Why wouldn’t you be able to grow something from the dead?
“Your soul cannot die here,” Night said, and again that supernova of panic erupted in Pan’s stomach. “Every time your body is killed, your soul gets, I don’t know, rebooted. It travels to the nearest mountain, where it’s remade.”
“Like an infinite-lives hack,” muttered Marlow.
Night nodded.
“What else do you know?” Pan asked.
“I know that the more it happens, the less you are you,” she said. “How’s your head? Full of fluff?”
Pan nodded, feeling her thoughts slosh around inside.
“You are remade, but each time you become a little less like yourself. You forget things, like your name, like where you came from. Patrick and Brianna, they were lost.”
“He was eating her,” said Marlow, sifting the ash through his fingers.
“He has been eating her for years,” she said. “Over and over and over. I have crossed paths with them already, many times, but from a distance. There are others here that are far, far worse.”
“We saw,” said Pan. “People, back in the city. They were strung up like plants. They were insane.”
“We are all insane here,” said Night. “You will be, too.”
“No,” said Marlow, chewing his knuckles. “Not me.”
“But what are they?” Pan said. “They said they were Engineers.”
Night nodded.
“Hell is full of them. I don’t know how many people used the Engine, how many made a deal. It must have been thousands, tens of thousands. You remember the book, right, the book with their names? How many centuries did it go back?”
“I think the first entry was like nine hundred years ago,” said Pan.
“And you said I’ve been here, what? A day? A day for you is years here. So what is nine hundred years?”
An eternity, Pan thought.
“And it’s not even that simple,” said Night. “The longer you’re here, the slower time goes. I think after a while, it just stops altogether.”
Pan rubbed her eyes, launching fireworks across the dark.
“So we’ve got Engineers,” she heard Marlow say. “They’re dangerous, right? I got attacked by one when I first arrived. I thought it was Pan.”
When Pan opened her eyes Night was shaking her head.
“I don’t know what they are,” she said. “But they’re not Engineers. They’re ghosts. They come and go, and they always look like people you know, but under their skin they’re mechanical, like insects made of pieces of Engine. I don’t know where they come from, but they sure want to keep killing you.”
Night hissed a laugh.
“I’ve been killed by five of the hijos de puta already. One of them looked like my mom. One of them looked like you, Marlow.”
“Sorry,” he said.
“Luckily you see them coming,” she said. “They home in on you. It’s why I took so long getting to you when Patrick attacked; I was waiting to see if it was really you.”
Night glanced up at the darkening sky.
“So we’ve got Engineers that want to kill us,” said Marlow. “Plus those … things, ghosts. Not to mention the demons. Anything else in the way of us and the exit?”
“Exit?” Night whispered, shaking her head. “No, everything here, it’s been here forever. Nothing escapes.”
“Yeah?” said Marlow. “Well, hell hasn’t met me yet.”
Pan sputtered a laugh, but Night held up a hand in caution.
“Careful what you say, Marlow. This place, it feeds on hope. It feeds on it, and devours it. And it’s always hungry.”
“Hope?” said Marlow.
“Sí,” she said. “That’s what hell is, claro? The end of hope.”
“So we just wait here to die, again and again?” asked Pan, a wave of darkness swelling up inside her.
The silence that followed smothered her, made her feel ocean-deep.
“No,” said Marlow. “You must have seen something else, something we can use.” He scanned the sky and Pan followed his gaze, finding a deeper darkness in the dusk. “That,” he said. “What’s over there?”
Night shook her head, a little too quickly.
“What?” asked Pan.
“No,” she said.
“You have to say,” said Marlow. “Please, Night. What is it?”
“I cannot,” she said.
She pushed herself up, began pacing. Trails of dust defied gravity, stretching like rockets toward the sky. She waved them away, her face a mask of concern.
“When I got here, I tried to explore, tried to find a way out. There isn’t one, and even if there were, there are too many dangers here. Even if we found a door, the demons wouldn’t let us leave. They’d kill us and we’d end up right back here, or on another one of these damn mountains.”
“But—” said Marlow.
“I saw it too,” she interrupted. “The darkness. God knows why I thought it would help. I tried to get close but … The things you have already seen, they are nothing compared with this. They are sane compared with what I found down there.”
“But you think it might be a way out?” asked Pan.
“No, not a way out,” said Night. “Something else.” Her mouth flexed, her throat gulping as if she physically couldn’t get the words up.
Pan saw her glance to the edge of the world, to where that spiral of not-quite-darkness leaked into the sky.
“Night, please,” said Pan. She stood, swaying until her new legs found their strength. She walked to the girl and put her hands on her shoulders, squeezing.
Night shuddered, falling against Pan and letting her hold her. The noises she was making weren’t exactly sobs, they were almost mechanical, like she’d forgotten how to cry.
“Please,” Pan said again. “What did you see?”
“I saw him,” said Night, breathing the words into Pan’s ears, looking once more at the horizon. “I saw the Devil.”