Silver Shard

Anna Helena Silverwood tightens her arms around the foremast of her ship. If she’s done this right, in a few seconds the vessel will ride its last wave.

The horizon tilts to a crazy angle and the ship rises high on the wild water as if it might take off and fly. Anna grits her teeth and hugs the mast even harder. Her thick braid of sopping dark—red hair hangs out sideways from her head.

The hull finally drops out of the air and smashes onto an outcropping of jagged black rocks. Anna’s legs fly up and she loses hold of the mast. Her body crashes to the deck and she slides on her back toward the bow.

The ship convulses, heaves to starboard and smashes down again. Black water surges ahead of it onto the shore the ship’s rickety wooden body, which splits open on the rocks with painful, screaming sounds. Most of the debris thuds onto the sand—except the objects that don’t fly that far and end up in the water or on the rocks instead.

The now-useless vessel settles onto the rocks and quiets down. Anna lies on her back on the deck, looking up through powder-blue eyes. It’s almost peaceful. Overhead the mast points like a finger at a flat gray sky. The sails hang limp. In a few brief moments this big boat has gone from a mighty transport to a beached skeleton.

Anna had named her ship “Bozo,” by accident. After a while alone on the sea, she found that she tended to talk to it, argue with it, and shout at it when the water got rough or things did not go the way she wanted them to. It must have been the solitude combined with the stress of staying afloat and avoiding detection. She would shout things like: “What are you doing, Bozo?” or, “Help me out here, Bozo!” Eventually Anna realized that the ship had a name, and that name was Bozo.

Realizing she has to keep moving, Anna lowers herself through a gaping hole torn by the rocks in Bozo’s hull and drops feet-first into the shallow water. After all the two of them have been through together, seeing the ship like this hurts her heart. She blinks back tears, but she knows she can’t waste time being sentimental. She pats the side of the ship and says quietly, “Many thanks, Bozo. You had good energy.”

Anna doesn’t feel ready to come ashore yet. She’s grown used to being alone, having time and space to think. She’s written in stacks of journals. She’s carved ornate patterns in the ship’s wood. She’s lived hidden from the world, and for the first time in her life, she felt safe. Not anymore.

Anna slogs toward the beach, lifting her boots high in the knee-deep surf. She is twenty years old and strong from her time at sea. Her braid falls over one shoulder, loose hairs blowing across her oval face. Her dark-green cargo pants and leather jacket stick to her body, caked with mud.

Instinctively, as she has done for five years, Anna reaches up to touch the pendant around her neck. She doesn’t find it right away. Maybe it swung around onto her back in the crash. She reaches around, grasping, but doesn’t find anything there either.

Anna freezes. Of all the things to lose! Did it fly off?

She retraces the crash in her mind: the ship hitting the rocks, the direction that she fell on the deck—if the pendant did come off, it must have flown this way.

Everywhere she looks, glimmers and reflections draw her eye. Could that be it? What about that over there? She looks straight down; plants and sand shift around her boots.

A thing on the beach moves some distance away. It’s a wisp of a man, dressed in a ragged knee-length black overcoat. He shuffles across the sand, bent forward like a brittle stick, eyes fixed on the ground. When the wind hits him he wavers, as if the air might snap off the top part of his body. He appears oblivious to the presence of Anna or her wrecked ship. A silver glint on the ground catches his attention and he bends down, laboriously, to pick up something. The object flashes in a bit of sunlight breaking through the clouds.

Anna watches the man with caution. She steps off of the rocks and her boots sink in wet sand. He still ignores her, but she can see he’s found something on a chain.

She marches straight up to confront the man, and puts out her hand. “What you got there?” she says.

“I found it in the sand,” the man says, unhelpfully.

“Well if you don’t mind,” Anna says, her hand still extended, “that’s mine—or rather, I’m keeping it right now—and I’d appreciate it back.”

The man says nothing. His head swivels back and forth at an unnatural angle, like a doll whose head got popped off and put back on. His pupils expand and contract with a whirring sound. Anna can hear the clicks of levers and gears.

“Look,” Anna says, “there are many valuable things around here that you can have instead.” She waves her arm at the refuse all around them. “Like that chest over there. It’s full of treasure. Or, the big armoire by that rock. It’s all yours. All for that one little necklace you’ve got in your hand. Okay?”

“Really?” the man surveys the beach, his eyes moving around in their sockets. For the first time he seems aware of his surroundings. There is certainly a great deal to choose from.

“Sure, help yourself,” Anna says.

The man walks by Anna, eyes fixed on the riches before him, his knees clanking as he goes. As he passes, Anna snatches the necklace out of his hand.

“Go ahead,” Anna says, “take whatever you’re going to take, but move it along. I’ve got to clean up this mess.”

“You did make a mess,” the man mutters, swiveling his head back and forth. “Quite a mess…” He stoops down and pulls a silver ladle out of the sand, turns it over a few times, then sets it down near a rock farther away from the water. He repeats the process for a wooden box, which is so heavy he must drag it behind him, leaving a track across the beach.

Anna holds the necklace up in front of her by the chain. Hanging on the end is a mangled half of a metal circle, a couple inches across. The spiral pattern on its surface has almost worn away; its broken edge is jagged where it was violently chopped in two. “If only I could lose you,” she says. “I wish I could, more than anything.” She places the half-portal pendant back around her neck where it belongs.

After several trips back and forth on the beach, the man raises his voice to be heard over the surf and the wind. “Are you by yourself?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Anna replies.

“All alone—just you and that big ship? Nobody else?”

“Nobody,” Anna says.

The man considers this. “You must be good with boats,” he says.

“I’m good with a lot of things,” Anna says. “I pick up the skills I need depending on the situation.”

“Really,” the man says. His head pivots to look at the ship, then back at the young woman. He frowns, and his gray skin crinkles. “What would possess you to crash a ship like that?”

“Well, I needed to get out of it,” Anna explains. “That was the only way.”

“To smash the ship all to bits?” the man asks.

“Pretty much,” Anna says.

The man thinks about what he has seen and heard, then turns his attention back to salvaging objects from the ground. Eventually he tires, seats himself on a rock and surveys his new possessions. He tugs on the lid of the chest—perhaps it contains tangled pearl necklaces and handfuls of loose gems. The whole structure bends and warps as he pulls the lid off. The lock is long gone. The only thing keeping the box together are the metal fittings at the corners.

The inside of the chest is still in pretty good shape—although it doesn’t contain piles of jewelry. Instead, it holds a trove of photographs and papers. No wonder the thing was so heavy.

The man reaches in with a bony gray hand and lifts out an oval picture frame. It’s a portrait of a stern-looking woman, dark hair pulled back, black dress with a white lace collar, a bit of colored pencil tinting bringing some pink to her cheeks. Underneath this picture there’s another matching oval frame, this one containing the portrait of a man, equally unpleasant-looking. This fellow’s got a thin, triangular beard and dark clothes. Maybe these two people were once a couple. Not the sorts you’d invite for a lively dinner party, by the look of them.

The chest offers up more pictures, mostly frameless. Some are packed together in hefty bundles tied with string; others are loose. The man extracts a couple handfuls and leafs through them one at a time. Anna comes up behind him and watches his progress.

“Are these pictures of anyone you know? Family portraits?” the man asks without looking up.

“Nah,” Anna replies. “Just some stuff.” She watches the man turn each item over and look at both the back and the front. It doesn’t matter who the people are in the pictures, or what the man finds in the chest. None of it matters. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a black, hexagonal object the size of her palm and tosses it onto the ground.

Out in the water, the ship begins to emit high-pitched squeaking noises.

The gray man remains engrossed with the photographs, gears clicking and whirring, failing to notice the debris around him sliding and rolling along the ground only to disappear into the black hexagon. The noises from the ship grow louder, and sections of the hull fold inward like a giant, deflating balloon.

The man lifts out a slip of paper covered in handwriting. The top section consists of a rectangle filled in with intricate lines and markings. Below that, it reads:

Dear Friends,

By the time you read this, you will have scanned in some seriously bad code with your ‘tom here. This code will burrow deeply into your systems. It’s probably gotten pretty far already. Good luck cleaning that up. And, sorry I couldn’t stay longer. It’s been lovely.

All the best, as always,

Anna.

The man’s head pivots up. By this time the ship has collapsed in on itself, folding and shriveling down to the size of a basketball. The ball rolls onto the sand and disappears into the hexagonal object without a sound. More items follow: wads of photographs, pieces of wood. The silver ladle skitters along the sand and then it is gone, too.

“Look,” Anna says to the man, “I know you’re a ‘tom.” She taps her temple with her finger. “Camera head, right?”

“I…I don’t know…” the man stammers. He frowns.

The chest of photographs crumples before getting sucked in, too. The beach and surf are now empty except for Anna and the drone.

“What’s a ‘tom?” the man asks.

“It’s what you are,” Anna says. “Short for automaton. You’re here to scout, to watch. That’s your job. You are, for lack of a better term, refurbished. The manufacturers did a decent job, though. Did they wipe your memory blank?” Anna takes hold of the man’s chin and peers into either side of his face. She can hear reel-to-reel tape whirring inside his head. “Maybe they did erase you. Or, maybe you were already dead, and they reanimated you and installed some hardware. Anyway, I regret I haven’t the time to investigate your workings further. I must go now. Your ‘tom friends will be here any second. I saw them already—that’s why I had to come ashore.”

Anna picks up the black hexagon and hands it to the ‘tom. Baffled, he takes the object from her and looks down at it, the camera lenses in his empty pupils focusing and refocusing. The hexagon sucks in his hand, and then the rest of him, and drops through the now-empty air to the sand. The beach is once again as clean as it was before Anna’s abrupt and noisy arrival.

“Bye ‘tom,” Anna says, fishing a portal—one that has not been chopped in half and still works—out of her pocket.

Shortly the roar of hundreds of engines will drown out the surf as a squadron of automaton-piloted airships closes in on the coast. When they find nothing at this beach, they will conduct a scan of their systems searching for navigation errors. With that scan, Anna’s code will run and jumble the airships’ controls until they all dive into the sea or crash into the rocks.

By then, Anna Helena Silverwood will be long gone.

“Oh, my GOD, Henry. STOP!” Helen yells.

“Nah,” Henry says, and grins.

“Give me that.”

“No.”

“Give it to me!” Helen Silverwood grabs at her younger brother Henry’s paper and pencil. Henry pulls them away. In a flash Helen throws Henry on the ground, crushing his legs into his stomach. A fifteen-year-old maintains a significant physical advantage over a kid who is ten.

“Give it here or I’ll make you puke,” Helen says.

“I’m going to puke listening to you guys fight,” their dad says from a nearby redwood log. Gabriel Silverwood unfolds his legs from beneath him and stands up, having given up on the possibility of spending a few minutes meditating. This trip was meant to be a peaceful time in a quiet setting. Instead, Gabriel fears that his own progeny are creating a disturbance for everyone—the other campers, the trees, the birds, all of nature.

The family’s campsite looks out over the fork of a wide river. Fist-sized rocks cover the shore. The opposite bank is lined with a thick stand of pine trees. Each tree has an upside down twin reflecting up at it from the water. Gabriel considers that the trees are like his family—attempting to come up for air and enjoy some peace and quiet.

“Let’s go skip stones,” Helen says, standing and yanking her brother up by his arm.

“Okay,” Henry says, and the two of them run off across the rocks. Their argument has dissipated like early morning fog in the forest. Gabriel watches them go—Henry with his wild shock of white-blond hair like his mother’s, Helen with her long black strands that resemble Gabriel’s own ponytail.

Gabriel picks Henry’s paper out of the mud. It’s covered in caricatures of Helen—Helen with horns, Helen with spots, all kinds of unflattering depictions of his sister. Gabriel turns the paper over. On the opposite side he finds a dense pattern of lines, like a physically impossible subway map. He can make out a few symbols, but nothing recognizable. The Guild had told Gabriel that his son might make drawings like this –shapes that don’t seem to follow a discernable pattern—but the Guild also explained that the confused markings would eventually become more coherent as Henry develops his skills.

Gabriel doesn’t want to work with his son on developing skills; he wants to relax in the woods with his wife and kids.

“Urghhhhhh,” a voice says from inside an orange, smallish triangular tent. The walls flutter a little to indicate life.

Gabriel pokes his head in and does his impression of a voice in a scary movie: “It moooooooves!”

“Riiiiiight,” his wife Kate says, rolling over. She’s a shock of white hair amongst a heap of sleeping bags and blankets.

Gabriel crouches down and places his hand on Kate’s head. “Hello, darling,” he says quietly.

Kate looks up at her husband and her sky-blue eyes brighten. “Hello, husband,” she says. She pokes a hand out from amongst the covers and he takes it. The two of them sit like this for a long moment, grateful to share the same space and time. Both of them are right here, in this tent—together.

“Food?” Gabriel asks finally.

“Food. Yes,” Kate replies. She sits up and rubs her eyes.

Gabriel has made pancakes in various fantastic shapes. He retrieves a few from a warming pan over the fire and slaps them on a plate.

A high humming noise reaches them through the morning air. The kids hear it first and run toward the riverbank, tripping over the rocks. The sound comes from a small object skimming along the top of the water, scattering birds as it comes.

Helen and Henry give chase along the riverbank. The object continues its path another fifty yards or so, then turns sharply toward the bank and crash-lands right in front of them. Gabriel and Kate can see the two kids crouch down briefly in the distance, then come running back toward the campsite.

“Hey! Check it out!” Henry calls, running over the rocks. He’s carrying a contraption in both hands that resembles a beat-up radio-controlled boat. Reaching the campsite, he plunks it down on the table next to the plate of pancakes. Kate stares at it, chewing.

“A water drone? Those are really old technology,” Kate says through her pancakes.

“Indeed,” Gabriel agrees, poking at the object and turning it over. “I can’t believe anybody still uses these.”

“Whoever sent us a water drone must have gotten their hands on it in a past time frame,” Kate says.

The water drone is the size of a six-pack of soda and gray-brown, with triangular wing-like attachments jutting out of its sides. It is meant to travel on top of and through the water for great distances. It’s got a rusty square door on top, held closed with a simple latch.

“Open it!” Henry shouts, jumping up and down.

“Not so fast,” Gabriel says. He hands the drone to his daughter. “Helen, take a look at this first and see what you can tell us about the technology.” He’s not going to miss the chance to test his daughter. She might be fifteen now, but she’s still got a lot to learn. She needs practice.

Helen takes the drone and turns it upside down, water spilling out onto the table. “There’s a panel under here,” she says, tracing a rectangle on the drone’s hull. “And these winglets, they contain the antennae that put out the signal. One wing functions, then the other. They trade off.”

“Good,” Gabriel encourages her. “What else?”

Helen stares at the drone and the machinery comes apart in her mind’s eye. The metal casing bolted to the outside of the hull gives way in her vision to electronics, connections, and wiring with redundant power sources, including solar and salt. There are explosives inside. Helen can see it all, the layers separating and each component and wire becoming clearer.

“Why would there be explosives?” Helen asks.

“Really? Is it going to blow up?” Henry is even more excited now. “Can we make it blow up?”

“No, the explosives are a security measure,” Kate says. “To ensure that the drone only goes where it’s supposed to. If it were to fly off course, it would go blam”

“So we can assume the drone stayed on course,” Helen says.

“That is an assumption we can make,” Gabriel says. “Shall we crack this thing open?”

“Will it blow up?” Henry asks again.

“No, kid, it won’t,” Gabriel says, patting Henry on top of his head. “Besides, we don’t want it to—yet. We want to find out what it brought us first, don’t we?”

“Brought us?” Helen asks.

“Yeah,” Kate says. “Apparently even on our supposed vacation in the middle of the woods people can find ways to reach us. And this, this drone, is coming to us from some time way in the past. Or from someone with access to the past. That’s for sure. I can only think of a few people who would be able to use one of these water drones at all.”

Kate sticks a finger under the latch on the back of the drone and pops it open. Everyone leans in to get a look.

The drone’s guts don’t appear too exciting at first glance. There’s a square box wired to the inside, which Kate pries out without disconnecting it. It must have twenty wires in various colors and thicknesses stuck to ports in its sides.

“This box is an encryption relay, and this is how it communicates,” Kate says, pointing to a pair of red wires attached to the box. She flips the box over. It’s got a tiny screen on the bottom. “And this display here should tell us what this little doohickey wants.”

Sure enough, the screen lights up and green letters scroll across it, like a sign at a subway station. The message begins in the middle, so Kate must wait until it reaches the end and starts over to read it all.

“Wow,” Kate says, looking up at her husband when the message concludes.

Gabriel takes the box from her and reads the message as it scrolls by again. “Anna. Why now?”

“Honestly…” Kate says.

“Is anyone going to say a complete sentence so we know what you’re talking about?” Helen demands. “Henry and I are here, too.”

“Yeah,” Henry says, crossing his arms and glaring.

“Well,” Kate says, looking up at her kids, “let me explain. There’s this person, Anna. She’s an ancestor of yours.”

“Anna Helena Silverwood? Like in the stories?” Henry says. “Remember? There was an Anna in the story you read to us about the old woman who came to the tiny town in the mountains, and there were drawings on the ground, and she had the Book of the Future, and all of that. Remember the story, in the little notebook?”

“I guess you guys have been reading the Silverwood notebooks,” Gabriel says to his wife.

“Um, yes, we have,” Kate says. “The stories in the notebooks have provided entertainment when we’ve been on the road. And I do mean, stories.” She shoots a look at Henry. “Anyway, Anna sent this drone because she needs to talk to me.”

“So, Anna is real! The stuff in the notebooks is real, then!” Henry says.

“Don’t let her give you the thing,” Gabriel says, pointing a finger at Kate. “No thing. We are not dealing with the thing.”

“You know as well as I do, if it’s my turn, it’s my turn,” Kate says.

“No! No thing!” Gabriel says. He sounds like a little kid throwing a fit.

Kate sighs. “Fine. I will do my best not to end up with the thing. But Anna needs to talk to me, and from the look of this message, it’s urgent. I’ll go into town here and see if I can meet up with Anna there. Obviously this is important, or she wouldn’t have gone to the trouble to dig up this ridiculous piece-of-junk drone to reach us with.”

“Anna is supposed to be at sea,” Gabriel says. “On a ship. In another time. And place. You know, safe. With the thing.”

“There’s more to the message,” Helen says, staring down at the tiny screen. “Every so often it blinks on and off and displays a set of coordinates.”

Kate peers at the series of numbers. “That location is near here. That’s in town. Anna is not at sea—and she’s in this time frame.”

Kate and Gabriel look at each other. “That’s not good,” they say simultaneously.

An hour later, Kate has made preparations to go to town and meet up with Anna. But before leaving, she pauses a long time in Gabriel’s arms.

“This has been nice, here in the woods,” Kate says to her husband.

“Yes, it has,” Gabriel replies. “Now be careful, and don’t let Anna do anything impulsive or rash. She’s been on a boat. By herself. For a very long time. She might be even more frazzled than usual.”

“Okay,” Kate says, smiling up at Gabriel and touching the side of his face. “Make sure the kids don’t throw each other in the river.”

“Why? I was thinking I might throw them in myself,” Gabriel says, and grins.

“Today is a special day! Do you want to know why?”

A tall, elegant Tromindox reaches out with long fingers and touches the cheek of a skeleton mounted on the wall. The bones of this skeleton are chalky and dry, half-embedded in a mount of plaster and caked with years of dust. The jaw of the skull hangs open in an unintentional and ghastly smile.

“This is a special day because,” the Tromindox says, “Anna Helena Silverwood has at last come to shore.”

The creature turns away from his bony friend, his only companion.

“And how do I know this information, you want to know?” the Tromindox asks. “Well I know it because of you, my dear.”

This Tromindox calls himself Monder, a name he much prefers to the ridiculous letters and numbers assigned to his kind by the humans. Monder performs a few twirls in the center of the circular room and the tails of his ornate robe follow him. “Yes, you made it all possible. I am so, so proud of you.”

Monder moves like a dancer, elegant and refined—nothing like the hunching posture normally associated with Tromindox. He displays no tentacles; his gray-black skin does not glisten. He wears robes, but these are not torn or ragged. They are tailored and elegant, sewn from fabric embroidered with ornate floral patterns in gold thread. His posture is upright; his torso held in place by buckles and straps and a black leather waistcoat. A high collar frames his long, narrow face and his intelligence shines through his enormous yellow eyes. A black mane of hair sweeps back from his face and down his back. He is the closest any Tromindox has ever come to being beautiful.

“Okay, let me revise my previous statement,” Monder says, spinning back toward the skeleton with one slender finger still in the air. “Given that we, as you know, spend our time here under the ground, I honestly have not even the first idea if it is daytime or night. So instead let us just say, this is a special twenty-four-hour period. Or we could say, it’s a special moment. It’s the moment we have waited for. Well, I’ve waited for this moment. While you have been hanging out there, on my wall.” Monder’s long hands move with his thoughts.

Monder approaches the skeleton, tilting his head. A silver chain loops around the skeleton’s neck and rests on its ribcage. The pendant strung on the chain is encased in a clear box, from which protrude complex webs of wires. The wires snake across a stone wall and attach at various points to a bank of fifty or more screens of every shape and size imaginable, many of them mounted in elaborate gold frames that might be found on a painting in the Louvre or the Uffizi. Some of the screens are filled with rows of characters, a few display maps or photographs, while others sit blank or crackle with static.

“You lovely thing, you,” Monder says, not to the skeleton but to the item around its neck. Inside the clear box, one half of a mangled portal hangs from the chain. If this portal were complete, it would look like a coin with a square hole in the center and a spiral design stamped on its surface. It would be functional, capable of encoding time and space coordinates and facilitating travel. But this particular portal is nothing but a jagged, bent half-circle of metal, incapable of anything.

Monder taps a finger on the clear box and then turns and walks toward the bank of screens, scraping one sharp nail along the stone wall as he goes and causing bits of dust and rock to fall to the floor. Reaching the first of the collection of monitors he continues, his nail screeching across the surface of one screen, then another and another until he reaches the largest display situated at the center. Here he stops. This enormous monitor is lit up with a colorful, highly-detailed map overlaid with a grid. Monder pokes at it, and one square of the grid expands to fill the screen. He can see a shoreline and a black square marking where Anna’s ship used to be. From that spot extends a yellow line, moving inland.

“There she is,” Monder says over his shoulder to the object in the box around the skeleton’s neck. “Your sister. Your twin. My freedom.”

Kate pulls her motorcycle off of the two-lane road in the redwoods and parks on the damp gravel next to the Clown Diner, a trailer-sized establishment wedged between two redwood trees not far from where Kate and her family have been camping. A sign decorated with a faded fat clown and outlined with non-functional neon tubes rusts out front. In the corner of her eye Kate picks out a figure near the door and knows immediately it is Anna.

The two women, members of the same clan and distant cousins, embrace; they have not laid eyes on each other in a very long time.

“I wish I could say I was thrilled to see you,” Kate says into Anna’s shoulder. They release each other.

“You look good, cousin,” Anna says, her eyes intent on Kate’s face. She reaches up and brushes Kate’s bangs off her forehead. “How are you?”

“Worse for the wear, I’m sure,” Kate says as the two of them walk inside. Tiny bells tinkle on top of the door to announce their arrival. “But then, aren’t we all.”

The pair sits down opposite each other on red vinyl benches in a window booth. Coffee appears unbidden at their elbows.

“How is life on dry land?” Kate asks.

“Life on dry land is…unanticipated,” Anna says. “I expected to be gone much longer. I had gotten used to the idea. I was good at keeping myself occupied. I was teaching myself Mandarin and getting really good at sea navigation.”

Kate smiles. “You’re the only person I know who could make the best of self-imposed exile.”

“It wasn’t so bad,” Anna says. “It gave me time to think, too. How is Helen?”

“Helen is adjusting,” Kate replies. “I took that kid for a wild ride. Her brother, too. Pulled the rug out from under both of them, over and over. We’ve moved so much and gone on the run so many times. And the process by which they learned about the Silverwood clan and the Guild and who they each are was…messy. I think they are still deciding whether they can believe anything I say ever again.”

“What are they, ten and fifteen?” Anna asks.

Kate nods and takes a sip of bitter coffee. Before even lowering the mug she’s already groping around for the tiny milk pitcher with her other hand.

“Given their ages I suppose they wouldn’t believe you most of the time, anyway,” Anna says. “It’s the nature of being where they are in life.”

“Maybe,” Kate says, “but I think it’s also the fact that I waited and kept information from them for too long.” Kate dumps milk into her mug. “Their lineage, their genetics, their responsibilities—it’s a lot to have thrown at you all at once. I took too long to do it. I over-thought the process when I should have been more honest with them sooner.”

“I’m sure you did your best, Kate. We all do our best,” Anna says. She signals to the waitress by the counter, a hundred-year-old woman in a ruffled apron who will require several minutes to shuffle over to their table. “It’s the Silverwood way, dear. ‘Hi, welcome to the clan, let us familiarize you with the bizarre and treacherous things you will now be dealing with for the rest of your life…’”

Kate smiles. She wonders how Anna can be so calm.

“So…” Anna begins.

“I know,” Kate says. “I gather that it’s my turn to be the fragment bearer.”

“I’m afraid it is, dear,” Anna says, touching the pendant hanging around her neck. “Not by my choice, believe me. I would have kept this chunk of metal out of your life for much, much longer if I possibly could have. At least until your children were grown…or better yet, I would have found a way to obliterate it once and for all.”

“I appreciate the sentiment,” Kate says. “Trust me, if anyone could find a way to destroy that thing, that person would be a hero to the whole clan. I appreciate you being the bearer for as long as you were. Remember back when we didn’t have to do this? When we had no fragments, no running around, when the clan was more…organized?”

“When we had briefings before we jumped in time so we knew what to expect?” Anna says.

“Yeah!” Kate says. “I remember you worked in Briefings for a while, when you were just a kid.”

“I was good at it,” Anna says. “I’d go in and say, welcome to such-and-such time frame, here are the vital facts you need to be aware of before entering society, etcetera.”

“Those were the days,” Kate says, absentmindedly pulling a napkin from the dispenser and folding it into a square on the table in front of her. “Now we’re this crazy mob, on the run all the time, hiding a piece of metal. It’s not the same.”

“Oh Kate, you know there are reasons,” Anna says. “You know that you and Gabriel had to escape with Helen when you did. You had no choice.”

“We left behind a disaster,” Kate says. “We abandoned the clan when you needed us. I created chaos, destroyed people’s lives, and then I left.”

Anna leans in. “But if you had not, there would be no clan and we would not be having this conversation. There would be Tromindox sitting here instead. Trust me on that.”

Anna lifts the chain from around her neck, frees it from her thick braid of hair, and sets the half-portal on the table with a clunk!. Somewhere in the kitchen the grill hisses with a new batch of hash browns.

“This all happened much too fast,” Anna says. “When I learned that the ‘toms had found me and my ship, I had to bail out quick. No one was supposed to be able to detect me, or the ship, or the fragment. I don’t know what went wrong.”

“I don’t know either,” Kate says, shaking her head. “You should have had more time. Much more time. Something changed; we just don’t know what it is.”

The old waitress has made it about half the distance to Anna and Kate’s table. Along the way she sets a fresh bottle of ketchup on the counter and straightens a salt and pepper shaker. Her knees whir and clank as she comes.

“I swear,” Anna says, “I will take the first chance I get to melt down this stupid necklace.”

“I know, we all will,” Kate says. She leans down slowly and bonks her forehead on the table a few times. “I can’t believe it’s my turn already.”

“I’m sorry,” Anna says. “But let me offer you some hope. I know this is probably a crazy notion, but I might have some clues as to the location of the Silver Shard.”

“You mean the mythical axe made from a branch of the Silverwood tree and metal from portals?” Kate says. “How do you know that relic even exists? I heard a story once—somebody thought they saw it mounted on the wall in a pawnshop in Boston. Someone else swore it was in the Metropolitan Museum. Those leads never amount to anything. I’m convinced the axe, if there ever was one, got turned into scrap a hundred years ago. It was probably just a story.”

“But Kate, if there is an axe,” Anna says, “and it’s capable of destroying portals, as the story goes, then it’s the one thing that can rid us of this fragment and close this particular portal forever. And that makes the Shard worth looking for, even if finding it is exceedingly unlikely. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I suppose,” Kate says. “Anything we could do to rid ourselves of this burden would be met with my undying gratitude.”

“And the gratitude of whoever is supposed to be the fragment bearer after you,” Anna adds.

“True. Here’s to the future,” Kate says, holding up her coffee mug. “And Anna, you know how much I owe you. I still don’t know how you can even talk to me.”

Anna just smiles. “The future,” she says, and their mugs clink together.

The old waitress pivots her head at a weird angle, her pupils focusing and refocusing; a recorder clicks inside.

“Now! Jump!” Gabriel calls to his son.

Henry vaults over a heating duct and skids with the soles of his sneakers into a crouching position. He picks up a metal throwing star in each hand and flings them up above his head. He somersaults, and when he comes up he catches the stars again and hurls them forward. The stars whiz through the air and embed with two thunks! into the center of a wooden target, which Helen has embellished with a smiley face in black spray paint. Cars honk and tires squeal down in the street far below their training ground on this urban rooftop.

Gabriel’s brother Christopher sits with his legs dangling over the side of the building, noodling on a beat-up bass guitar. He plays a few bars, stops, rummages in his pocket and extracts a pick, then goes on playing. Christopher is taller than Gabriel, and his black Mohawk needs a trim; the front is flopping down into his face. He’s got on a black T-shirt and dark gray jeans that end at high-top boots. When he moves, the assortment of chains and cords he wears around his arms clank together. He’s got a large silver ring on each index finger and these catch the sunlight as he plays.

“That was better,” Gabriel says to Henry. “Just make sure you come to a full stop after the somersault or you’ll go flying off the roof and your uncle will have to come down there and peel you off the sidewalk. Okay Helen, your turn.”

Helen jumps over the duct as well, but her technique more resembles hurdling. She scoops up a crowbar from the ground, rolls over, jumps up and wields it over her head like a sword.

“Good,” Gabriel says, “although your head is too high when you’re jumping. Keep that head down. You don’t want to create too much movement or catch the eye. Blend with the skyline.”

“Okay,” Helen says. “I am the skyline.”

The traffic far below them continues to hum along, drivers at odds with one another in every direction. The space on the roof is tight; the edge and a fall of ten stories is never far away. This is a good space to practice stopping and control.

Gabriel has a seat next to his brother while the kids go on practicing. A dumpster lid slams below.

“How’s your head?” Gabriel asks.

“Hurts,” Christopher says without looking up from the bass.

“Sorry about that. Maybe it’s that haircut you got. I know it pains me to look at it.”

“That’s real mature,” Christopher says.

Christopher plays some more. “Seriously though,” he says, “it hurts all the time. And I see things and hear things. People talking. Screaming. Gibberish. It feels like there are people walking around with me all the time, man. I feel like…I’m never alone.”

“You know what?” Gabriel says. “I think you are the only person I’ve ever been around for any length of time who got digested by a Tromindox and managed to come back. I mean, there were the people who came to Helen when she was small, the ones who the Tromindox had almost totally absorbed but who managed to get to her while there was still some of their human consciousness left. And the contact with Helen’s antivenom blood healed those people at the very last second. But those people always left right away once the process was done. They didn’t stick around. That was the deal – they could not disrupt Helen’s development. And she was supposed to believe she was dreaming. So they had to make themselves scarce. You, however, are still here.”

“I feel special,” Christopher says, rubbing his forehead.

“You are special,” Gabriel says, punching Christopher in the arm. “Special enough that we need to spend some quality time studying the after effects of Tromindox digestion. Maybe we can disrupt the headaches or get those voices to shut up.”

“Man, I hope so,” Christopher says.

Henry executes another somersault, leaps to his feet, and skids to a stop a few feet away.

“This was easier in the woods,” Henry says, brushing bits of roof gravel from the back of his shirt.

“Yes, it’s nice to have a soft carpet of pine needles to fall on,” Gabriel says, “but unfortunately, we don’t get to choose where we fall. Or don’t fall, since I’m teaching you such magnificent skills that hopefully you won’t need to.” He turns to his brother. “Christopher, you got any pointers?”

“No, brother, your instruction, as always, is the finest in the land,” Christopher grins.

“Okay, let’s try again…” Gabriel begins to say, but trails off. The Silverwoods have company.

A brittle-looking man in a knee-length black coat, slicked-back hair and a fancy trimmed goatee has appeared at the door leading into the stairwell.

“Howdy,” Gabriel says, wondering how long the stranger has been standing there.

“How are you, Mr. Silverwood?” the man asks, extending his hand.

“I’m just fine, Mister…” Gabriel shakes the man’s hand and peers at his face.

“Goode,” the man says. “Frederick Goode. Guild representative.”

“Ah! I see,” Gabriel says. But he doesn’t see. Since when do unknown Guild people pop in for visits out of nowhere?

“Well, if you’re here to check on how Henry is doing, the news is that he’s doing fine,” Gabriel says. “I’m sure you’re already aware that he’s got a Mentor, so we’re all good here. No pun intended.”

A motorcycle engine revs in the street below.

The visitor steps around Gabriel and approaches Henry. Henry has pried a throwing star back out of the target and holds it in his hand. The boy has grown wiry and his shoulders are the square shape of a young boy about to grow much taller. His white-blond hair sticks to his forehead. He shakes his bangs to one side and puts on a defiant face as the stranger looks him over.

“How are you, Henry?” Mr. Goode asks, putting his hands on his knees. The man’s tiny pupils focus on Henry’s face a little too sharply.

“Fine,” Henry answers, his expression cold. Who is this guy to bend down and talk to him like a toddler? Does he not see the throwing star?

“I hear you are progressing very quickly,” Mr. Goode says. “I’ve seen some samples. You’re making some very interesting drawings, aren’t you? And not all of places or things, are they?”

“Says who?” Henry demands.

“Your Mentor,” Mr. Goode says. “Rose speaks so highly of you. She says you began to draw…certain notations…at an earlier age than is usual. Is that true?”

“What notations?” Henry asks.

“Well, perhaps you haven’t been told yet,” Mr. Goode says. “I’m sure Rose brings you along at a pace you can handle.”

“I can handle any pace,” Henry says. “What notations?”

“I’m confident that you’ll learn when you are ready,” Mr. Goode says.

“What are you talking about? What notations?” Henry’s voice rises. It is not in Henry’s nature, or the nature of any ten-year-old kid, to allow questions to go unanswered.

Mr. Goode reaches into the breast pocket of his coat and pulls out a folded piece of paper. He opens it and holds it out so Henry can see it.

“This is mine!” Henry says. “Where did you get this? Rose keeps all my drawings.”

Intricate lines and shapes cover the paper, arranged in clusters at the top and bottom and with tiny arrows and notes filled in between them. The drawing resembles a strange map, very unlike Henry’s usual depictions of places and events.

“That, my friend, is the type of notations that I am talking about,” Mr. Goode says. He snatches the drawing back and folds it, tucking it into his breast pocket. “Thank you, Henry. That’s all I need for now.” He turns to leave.

“Hang on,” Helen says, stepping in front of Mr. Goode and blocking his path to the stairs. She’s tall for her age and can almost look the man straight in the eye. “Henry asked you a question. Where did you get that drawing?”

“I also asked what the notations are,” Henry points out.

The door to the roof has opened, and Kate emerges. She steps up behind Helen and places her hands on her shoulders. “My daughter asked you a question,” Kate says. “My son did, too.”

“I’m not here to answer your questions, I have the information I need. Thank you for your time.” Frederick Goode sidesteps Kate and Helen and exits down the stairs. His quick, even footsteps recede into the stairwell.

“Mom! Do you know that guy?” Henry asks.

“No, I don’t,” Kate says. “Where is your dad?”

“He was right here,” Henry answers. “We were practicing.”

“Gabriel?” Kate calls. No answer.

“Dad? Uncle?” Helen says. But the two brothers have left the roof.

The three of them find Gabriel and Christopher downstairs in the apartment, two long angular bodies folded into cross-legged positions and facing away from each other at either end of a worn Oriental rug. They each sit in a nest of wires and electronic components and wear black earphones. They look like two large kids playing with walkie-talkies.

The loft lacks furniture. It has only bare brick walls, beat up wooden floors, and multi-paned windows stuck shut with many layers of white paint. Cardboard boxes of varying shapes and sizes sit stacked against one wall.

Gabriel talks rapidly into a hand-held microphone plugged into a boxy contraption that looks like an old radio. On the rug next to him lies a hand mirror with a tangle of wires snaking out of the frame.

“Did you get that?” Gabriel says into the machine. “Is it there?”

At the opposite end of the rug, Christopher punches buttons into a makeshift keyboard and a small monitor in front of him lights up. Gabriel’s speaker emits static, and then Christopher’s voice comes through. “Yes, I got it. No match, though.”

“No match? Darn,” Gabriel says.

“Hi, Uncle Christopher,” Henry says, leaning into his dad’s microphone.

“Hey kid,” Christopher says without looking up at Henry at the other end of the rug. “I saw you had a friend drop by.”

“Yeah, a weird person I don’t know, if that’s what you consider a friend,” Henry says.

“Hang on…” Gabriel says, typing on a keyboard in front of him. “Hey Chris, what about this?” He hits the enter key.

An image appears on Christopher’s screen. He punches more buttons. A few seconds pass.

“Nope, no dice,” Christopher says.

“Darn,” Gabriel says. “Well, thanks for playing.” He turns off the box and the static noise cuts off. He turns and looks at his brother across the rug. “That’s disappointing.”

Helen picks up the mirror off the floor and scrutinizes it. “Sorry, Dad; looks like my modifications didn’t cut it.”

Gabriel takes the mirror from Helen. “The face recognition part you programmed works fine, kid. Check it out.” He bounds across the room with wires trailing behind him and hides behind a support column. He holds the mirror at arm’s length, points it back at Helen, and presses a button on the side. Helen’s reflection freezes, converted to an image in the mirror.

“Very nice, eh?” Gabriel grins. “Brilliant around-the-corner image capture. Brilliant! That’s how I got the snap of our visitor when he wasn’t looking. Check this out.” Gabriel pokes a few points on the image of Helen’s face with his finger and a grid appears. Lines converge on Helen’s facial features and geometric data pops up all around the sides. “See? Face analysis. Works fine, kid.”

“Now I’ll show you what happens with our man with the fancy goatee.” Gabriel swipes across the mirror, through several more pictures. There’s one of his brother Christopher, cutting his own Mohawk in a bathroom somewhere. There’s a close-up of Clarence, the family’s enormous retriever, currently sleeping in a square of sun on the floor. The face recognition has limited success with dogs.

Mr. Goode’s face appears again. The grid comes up, and the data pops on, but no identifying information is available. “See?” Gabriel says. “Your program pulled out all the important bits of this guy’s face, just like you designed it to. Problem is, these bits don’t match with anything in the Guild database. This guy is an unknown, even to the Guild.”

“Then how come that man has my drawing? And how come he says he’s from the Guild?” Henry asks.

“My guess is, that drawing he had was a copy,” Gabriel says. “It was stolen somehow from Rose’s archives. This is not the first time someone has gone after Guild material. It happens all the time. There’s an obvious advantage to getting a hold of drawings of things that haven’t happened yet.”

“That guy wouldn’t say what the notations are,” Henry says. Henry knows his drawings have been different lately, not always a depiction of a place or a thing, but rather these tangled messes of lines and symbols. They come over him, like a compulsion, and he has to write them down. It’s been happening more and more.

“I believe that Mr. Goode was referring to the ability of some Guild members to map out aspects of time, like rifts,” Gabriel says.

“What’s a rift?” Henry asks. He’s getting tired of this game of questions.

“When we use a portal,” Kate explains, holding up one of the spiral coins, “it’s a passage between one space-time and a different one, right? So when that opens, it bumps two different space-times up against each other. That’s why a portal has to be closed up completely after we use it.” She flips the coin over to show the other side. “If a portal doesn’t get closed properly, a strand of space-time can leak through, and the two sides of the portal can get stuck together. They become tangled. That’s when rifts can occur. Rifts are a no-man’s land in-between spaces and times.”

“And once a rift gets made,” Gabriel says, “they are incredibly hard to unmake. And there are a lot of them. Like the ones created by the Tromindox who stole a bunch of portals from the Council and started using them to hunt.”

“So it sounds like Henry can see more than regular places and things now,” Helen says. “It’s as if you’re saying he can make pictures of time itself. Is that right?”

“Exactly,” Kate says. “There’s another way that a rift can happen, too. That’s when a portal itself gets cut apart. Then the two halves are tangled together, no matter where they go. And sometimes, you don’t want the halves to be put back together under any circumstances…”

Gabriel points a finger at his wife. “Oh, no. No, no, no. You got the thing—didn’t you? Please tell me you don’t have the thing.”

Kate gives him a look. “Gabriel, it’s my turn. We’re having to move the fragment around faster and faster to keep it hidden. You know that. It’s my responsibility. Anna floated around on a cloaked sailing ship by herself for how long? Five years? And then she got detected. So she had to move, quickly, before someone connected her location to that of the fragment. The fragment won’t encode to me for a while, I don’t think. Anna did the best she could. But it’s my turn.”

Gabriel puts his hands on Kate’s upper arms, then drops them down and takes both her hands. “Okay. You know what?” he says. “I’m sorry. If you ended up with the thing, I guess that’s your duty. I don’t want to make it any more difficult than it already is.”

Kate buries her face in Gabriel’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

“What is the thing?” Helen asks.

“Why do I have to be drawing rifts? Why can’t I draw superheroes like everybody else?” Henry asks.

Daniel Brush sweeps dirt in-between the gaps in the covered wooden walkway outside the Brokeneck Book Store in the remote forest town of Brokeneck, California. Bertrand, the bookstore’s orange and opinionated cat, sits on the railing separating the walkway from the dirt street below. As always, the weather is hot. Daniel throws his brown dreadlocks back over his shoulders and wipes his forehead.

Daniel’s uncle, Mr. Brush, steps out the front door with a handful of envelopes. He’s already torn most of them open.

“Another college wants to talk to you,” Mr. Brush says. “This one’s far away. But they like you a lot. I think they would let you go there for no money.”

Daniel takes the letter from his uncle. “Thanks.”

“Sure, kid.” Mr. Brush smiles from behind his thick glasses. Daniel’s uncle has got a kind, easy manner and thinning hair. An assortment of pencils and pens sticks out of the pocket of his Hawaiian shirt, a short-sleeved masterpiece decorated with palm trees and surfboards and suns peeking between clouds. One of the pens has leaked and left a blue ink stain in the middle of a white cloud on the pocket.

Mr. Brush heads back inside; Bertrand follows him and takes up his customary spot atop , displayed on a counter behind the cash register.

Daniel is reading over the letter when a device buzzes in his pocket. The device was a gift from the mother of a friend. He pulls it out. It’s small and square, with a screen on one side. As Daniel understands it, this thing allows communication over pirated channels so no one can intercept your conversation. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work. The screen lights up with letters and a message.

Helen: Daniel u there?

Daniel: Yep how are things

Helen: OK I guess

Helen: My mom was given this necklace and it’s bad news

Helen: It gets passed around the clan like the Book of the Future and whatnot

Daniel: Sounds weird

Helen: Yeah we have to protect it

Helen: Actually it’s half a necklace

Helen: Has to be kept away from the other half no matter what

Daniel: What happens if the two halves get put back together?

Helen: Don’t know Bad things

Helen: Mom hasn’t totally explained

Helen: But thought u should know so you can keep an eye on the books

Helen: There’s this one squid who is up to no good

Daniel: Thanks

Helen: How’s Brokeneck

Daniel: Thrilling

Daniel: Nothing’s come out of the lake lately, so that’s positive

Daniel: Where’s the other half of the necklace

Helen: Far away I think

Helen: It’s called a rift

Helen: Things that are far apart but linked together

Daniel: Ha! sounds like us

Daniel: Okay that was awkward

Daniel: Helen?

Helen: Yeah I’m here

Helen: And yes that was awkward

Helen: Thanks for that

Daniel: Sorry

Daniel: I do miss you

Daniel: I’ll stop talking now

Helen: Okay

Daniel signs off, then takes the device and bonks it into his forehead several times.

Betty, the Silverwoods’ silver-blue Ford Maverick, maneuvers into one of the last remaining parking spots at Randy’s Quality Eats, a low-slung restaurant in a dirt lot at the edge of the interstate. Her engine growls to a stop. Cars jam the parking lot, having brought travelers seeking lunch and a break from the monotony of the road. The lunch rush began an hour ago.

Gabriel and Helen Silverwood reached this location by way of a portal, though, not by driving for hours like the restaurant’s patrons.

Gabriel climbs out of the car and stretches his legs. Helen exits the passenger side and stands as well. Clarence the dog naps in the back seat, his enormous head resting on his front paws. Every so often he makes a running motion with his rear legs as if dreaming of hunting rabbits. He doesn’t seem to mind portal travel; he just likes to be with his people—even if he does dream of rabbits.

Helen much prefers going out on assignment with her dad to being visited in her sleep as she used to when she was small, healing Tromindox victims with her antivenom blood. Now she stays wide awake and aware of what’s going on. Like a grownup person.

The windows of the diner are covered in sheets of dark purple plastic, no doubt to keep out the afternoon glare so people can chew their pancakes in peace. Helen can’t make out any shapes inside.

In fact, nothing moves inside or out except the breeze. Occasionally, a bird chirps or a truck rushes by.

“Is this the right place?” Helen asks her dad.

Lately the Silverwoods’ assignments have been all hunting, not much healing. The Tromindox are digesting their prey quickly. Most of the time it’s too late to get the human out by the time Helen gets there.

“This looks right,” Gabriel answers. He fishes a device from his pocket and peers down at it, shading it from the sun with one hand. “These are the correct coordinates. I have a sinking feeling, though, that we are too late. Again. Alright, let’s make some observations.”

Gabriel springs into action, pacing back and forth next to the car and analyzing the situation out loud as is his habit when presented with unexpected circumstances. When her dad gets like this, Helen privately calls it “Super Logic Mode.”

“What we see here,” Gabriel says, “is a parking lot full of cars. We’re next to a busy highway. This location should be bustling with activity. Have you seen a single person come out of this establishment since we got here?”

Helen scans the front of the restaurant. “Nope, I haven’t,” she says.

“And have you observed anyone getting gas at the station next door?”

Helen squints over at the station. Though there are cars in place at the pumps, one with the nozzle still sticking out of the tank, there are no people. “No, nobody there, either,” she answers.

“Things appear grim,” Gabriel says. “Let’s take a look around. You check the back; I’ll see inside. And remember, if you encounter anyone, palm out like this.” He holds his hand out in front of him, palm forward. On it, near his wrist, he’s drawn a circle with a spiral inside of it with a marker—the Silverwood symbol of a portal. Helen has the same drawing on her wrist. “Tromindox will know you’re Silverwood, and that if they touch you and your antivenom blood, they die. So they’ll leave you alone. If not, you’re in for a nasty jab with a venomous spike and a lot of ice and bandages.”

“Okay, Dad.” Helen says. She takes a path around the restaurant to the right, staying close to the wall. She scans the area, but sees no one. There’s a pair of white plastic chairs, brittle and yellowed from the harsh sunlight, and cigarette butts lying around on the ground. She gets up on tiptoe and peeks through a dingy square window. All she can see is an empty kitchen.

Gabriel pushes open the front doors and tiny bells tinkle. In the waiting area, a free-standing wooden sign displays the words PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED in carved yellow letters. A hissing sound reaches his ears from the back.

An enormous pot of water has nearly boiled away on the stove in the kitchen. Gabriel turns off the burner and then unplugs a waffle iron and powers down the grill, where a former sandwich has burned down to a matchbox-sized bit of charcoal. Still no one.

“Yup, we got here too late,” Gabriel says to himself. “Damn.” He pushes open a screen door at the back and steps out. The door squeaks and bangs shut.

“I don’t understand,” Helen says, coming around the corner. “Tromindox stalk single victims. They wait until someone is alone to attack them. They are too vulnerable otherwise, too slow and lethargic after they consume a whole human. How did they clear out this entire place? There had to be a ton of people here.”

“This is something new, for sure,” Gabriel says. “These Tromindox are working very fast. Based on the evidence, it looks like they came here to hunt in a pack. There had to be more than one to take out an entire restaurant’s staff and clientele in less than the time it took us to get here. I mean, our portal did dump us off a ways away, but still, it’s been less than an hour.”

“So where are they, then?” Helen asks. “Where is this supposed pack of Tromindox?”

“That, my dear, is what we’re going to find out,” Gabriel says.

Out in front of the restaurant, Clarence the dog rolls over in the car. A dust devil spins at the edge of the parking lot, and the dirt shifts on the ground like miniature sand dunes.

The area behind the diner offers only an overstuffed dumpster and more cigarette butts. Father and daughter stand with hands on hips, nothing much to examine except the ring of distant mountains.

“I must admit I’m not sure where to start,” Gabriel says. “This is a whole new problem. I thought at least we could liberate a human or two when we got here, maybe even heal a few. This is not the scene I expected us to come upon.”

“Look!” Helen points toward the horizon. A puff of dust rises from the ground, an indication of movement.

The two of them scramble to pull viewers out of their pockets and bring them up to their eyes. Helen turns her lens one way, then the other, and flips an orange-colored glass cover onto the front that filters for human activity—in case there is someone out there who hasn’t been fully Tromindox-digested yet.

The magnification does reveal human activity in the form of a man running through the desert. He pumps hard with his arms, his mouth wide open, his face a mask of panic.

Helen shifts her gaze to a few yards behind the man to see what’s chasing him.

It’s a dense flock of black birds. In a second or two the flock overtakes the man and engulfs his body in a dark mass. Man and swarm fall to the ground, where they convulse like a pack of hyenas on a gazelle.

“Killer blackbirds?” Helen says. “That’s what we came here for?”

“Not exactly,” Gabriel says. “Keep watching. And congratulations. You are one of the very first observers of a new Tromindox behavior.”

Finishing its kill, the flock rises from the ground in a single shape. The shape grows taller and solidifies until it resembles a seven-foot-tall, black-robed humanoid.

“Oh no,” Helen says.

“What you just saw, my dear, is swarming Tromindox,” Gabriel says. “I was afraid of this. Another agent warned me that our shape-shifting friends had somehow developed the ability to break themselves up into many organisms in order to attack and deliver venom more effectively. Based on what we see here, the Tromindox seem to be perfecting the skill.”

“And they’re trying it out in a remote location, where they can do their perfecting without much notice,” Helen says.

“Right you are,” Gabriel says. “None of these human travelers will arrive at their destinations. But it will take a while for anyone to make the connection to this spot. Nobody will realize that this diner is the only thing these people have in common.”

“Except for us,” Helen says.

The Tromindox turns and glares at them with huge, yellow eyes that stand out even at a great distance. The Silverwoods have been spotted.

“And, back we go to the car,” Gabriel says.

The two humans run straight through the diner, hurdle over the counter and burst out the front door, but stop short. The ground looks…weird. It pulses like water. Helen looks around her feet. What is this?

Before their eyes the ground changes appearance from yellow dirt into a sea of black, hand-sized creatures with tiny hooked claws at the ends of spindly arms and legs and flicking, scorpion-like tails. The horde scrambles over the dirt and up and over the parked cars, making terrible scraping noises and stirring up dust as they go.

They are closing in around the Maverick.

“Oh, no, Clarence!” Helen yells, and takes off running.

“Put out your hand! Show the symbol!” Gabriel yells. Helen sticks her palm out in front of her, but the creatures are moving too fast to pay any attention. They fly into her face and flail at her, scratching her arms and tangling in her hair. She tries to swat them off but there are too many. “There’s a million of these things!” She yells and spins, almost falling.

Always leave a window open when your dog is in the car…

Helen and Gabriel reach the Maverick as one of the scorpion-things squirms into the cracked window. Helen swats beasts away with one arm while shoving her other hand inside, grabbing the intruder by the back legs. It shrieks and jabs at her with its tail as she yanks it back out the window and flings it away.

Helen turns and faces the swarm with her back against the car door. Each time a tiny claw breaks her skin, the creature attached to it puffs away into black powder. The antivenom in her blood, a Silverwood trait she shares with her father, dissolves them instantly. It’s effective, but painful. She and her dad can’t use their blood to kill all of these things. They’ll end up as dried husks in the desert.

Helen pulls an energy gun from her belt and begins firing, sending the creatures’ loose shape-shifting molecules flying apart in all directions. They burst and flutter to the ground like burnt crepe paper. This method of defense is far less painful. Claws and wings scrape and thud against the car.

Gabriel positions himself at the driver’s side door and begins firing as well. The mass of bodies descends, hundreds of creatures screaming and diving with their needle-like claws extended in front of them. Gabriel climbs onto the hood of the car and keeps firing. He’s got scratches all over his face now, puffs of black dust appearing each time a creature breaks his skin.

Helen and Gabriel take aim at the thickest parts of the swarm, destroying as many creatures as possible with each shot.

Several meters away a portion of the mass sweeps together into a single black shape. They swoop upward to form a seven-foot Tromindox, a scaly mass of tentacles and claws with a skull-like head and huge eyes. Spikes protrude from its shoulders. The ambush slows as the swarm retreats and again forms one individual.

Helen pulls a stray scorpion-creature from her hair, throws it to the ground, and blasts it.

“Nice trick,” Gabriel shouts at the Tromindox. “Going all to pieces like that. Impressive.”

The Tromindox says nothing.

“Any last words?” Gabriel says, taking aim.

“Makes no difference if you shoot me,” the Tromindox calls back in a deep voice. “You’ll be coming up with your own last words, soon enough.”

“Why?” Gabriel asks. “Are we standing on a trap door? I don’t see one.”

“No, but the Imprisoned One will soon be free. Thanks to your clan.”

“What does he mean?” Helen says under her breath.

“I don’t know,” Gabriel mumbles. “Let’s keep him talking.”

“The Imprisoned One? He’s been irrelevant for centuries. He’s rotting at the center of an underground labyrinth out of time, last I heard,” Gabriel says.

“Not for long,” the Tromindox declares. “Not when the two fragments are reunited.”

“Oh, maybe you weren’t aware,” Gabriel says. “That’s not an option. The fragments don’t get to reunite, ever. They are kept permanently apart. You’ll never find them both. Nobody will.”

“Your wife has one,” the Tromindox says.

“How does he know that?” Helen whispers.

“People find one of them all the time,” Gabriel says. “Makes no difference. Nobody finds both.”

“Monder the Imprisoned One has the other,” the Tromindox says.

“That’s not possible,” Gabriel says. “The Council has the other fragment. And nothing goes in or out of Monder’s labyrinth. The labyrinth is out of time. No one goes there. Or comes out.”

“Is what he’s saying possible?” Helen whispers.

“I don’t know,” Gabriel mumbles back. “I don’t think so. I think he’s bluffing.”

“Believe what you like,” the Tromindox says. It raises its arms and breaks up again into a swarm of tiny creatures, spiraling upward into the air. Soon Helen and Gabriel can only see a patch of dots high in the sky.

“We’ve got to warn your mother,” Gabriel says, putting his weapon away, “in case that squid wasn’t just making stuff up to get a rise out of us.” He slides into the driver’s seat of the Maverick. “Get the portal and set it for the return trip. And remember what we said about closing the portal all the way once we’re through. We don’t want to create any more rifts.”

Helen climbs into the passenger seat. Gabriel hits the gas and Betty the Maverick screeches forward out of the parking lot, leaving a trail of dust and black powdered critters. Helen pulls the portal out of her pocket and shoves it into a slot in the dashboard.

Clarence wakes up in the back seat and smooshes his nose against the window as the scenery outside blurs, the car hurtles back through the portal, and the opening in space and time is sealed again, leaving no rift.

Gabriel bursts in the apartment door with Helen and Clarence close behind. “Kate?” he calls out.

“Right here,” Kate says. She is sitting cross-legged and hunched in the corner nearest the hot plate and sink. Henry lies on his stomach drawing nearby, surrounded by a mess of paper and pencils. Late-afternoon sun spills in the windows across half-finished hacking projects, large and small circuit boards, squiggly wires, boxes with unknown contents, welding equipment, pipes, and a few computer monitors. The water drone from the river lies on the floor, its guts spilled all around it. A 1960s-era clothing mannequin wearing a welding mask leans on the brick wall.

“We’ve got news,” Gabriel says. “From the field. We had an interesting time on our assignment out there in the desert.”

“I guess so,” Kate says, peering at her husband’s many wounds. “You look like you had a fight with a staple gun.”

“Yeah,” Helen says, rummaging under the sink for towels. “We got a little punctured.”

“I’ve got news, too,” Kate says. She spins around the subject of her attention, a light sheet lying flat on the floor. It’s thin, with rounded edges, the size of a smallish piece of paper. Kate touches it and it illuminates, displaying a single photograph with a caption underneath.

“Okay, let’s do your news first,” Gabriel says, crouching down and squinting at the picture. On the sheet he can see a grainy photograph of a disheveled man, standing on the street corner located beneath their apartment’s windows. This fellow is a regular in the neighborhood; Gabriel has seen him many times. In the picture, the man stands with his back to the camera clutching a sizeable piece of cardboard which is presumably scrawled with some slogan on the non-visible side. This fellow is often found marching up and down with handmade signs and making pronouncements about the issues of the day as he sees them. The topics vary.

“Notice anything interesting about this picture?” Kate asks.

Helen joins her dad, handing him a wet towel, and the two of them look closer. There’s nothing much to look at in the shot, just the man and his sign, and the sidewalk. No other people, nothing unusual in the background.

“I don’t see anything,” Helen says.

“What’s interesting is,” Henry says without looking up from his drawing, “the photo was taken from inside this room.”

Gabriel stands up. “Where? Here?”

“Yeah, it’s from the window,” Henry replies. “You can see the exact same angle if you stand over there by the mannequin and look down.”

“And from the way you say that, I assume that neither you nor your mother are the photographer?” Gabriel asks.

“Nope,” Henry says.

“Now read the caption,” Kate says.

Gabriel leans down and squints at the tiny letters. It reads, WE KNOW YOU HAVE THE FRAGMENT. IT WON’T BE LONG.

“Someone broke in here while we were out, while you were on your assignment,” Kate says, “and took this photo to tell us that they know where we are. We are compromised. Anna had the fragment for five years before being detected. And here I am, found out already.”

“Gosh, where have I heard that before?” Helen says, throwing up her arms. “Guess we’ll have to run away. Again. Where to this time?”

“Silverwood occupational hazard,” Gabriel says to his daughter, shooting her a look. “I prefer not to call it running away, though. I like to refer to it as strategic repositioning. Maintaining our advantage through location enhancement.” He smiles at Helen, but she’s not amused.

“So,” Kate says, “this photograph indicates that someone is trying to intimidate us, at least. That’s nothing new. What’s your news then?”

Well, to start,” Gabriel says, “I have to tell you that as rumored, those Tromindox have gotten very skilled at swarming. Haven’t they, kid?”

“Yeah,” Helen says, “they can bust up into hundreds of creatures and hunt somebody down, and then they turn back into one beast and finish the kill. The only useful weapon we had was the energy guns to blow them apart on a molecular level. We had no time to even find any humans to rescue. And obviously, the anti-venom blood is not helping very much. I feel like a pincushion.”

“So we’ve got that to deal with,” Gabriel says. “We will have to prepare ourselves to deal with swarming Tromindox from now on. But there was this one squid we talked to—this was the newsworthy part. It said that Monder knows where both the fragments are. And, that he has one of them.”

“No, he doesn’t!” Kate says. “How could Monder have one of the fragments? That makes no sense. He can’t interact with anyone, let alone the Council. And the Council has the other fragment. The portal to where Monder is is permanently non-operational.”

“This squid we talked to tried to give the impression that it had been in communication with our labyrinth-dwelling friend,” Gabriel says. “It’s possible he was just mouthing off, like they do when we get them on the run. But in light of your photo and note here, we have some things to think about.”

Kate touches the half-portal around her neck. “That can’t be a coincidence, some Tromindox going on about Monder and then this fragment being found so fast.”

“Monder supposedly can’t communicate with anyone,” Gabriel says. “Not Tromindox, not the Council, not us. He’s out of time. He’s in a labyrinth. Locked away, permanently.” Gabriel is pacing again. “But say he did get a hold of one of the fragments? We have no idea what he’s been doing down in his dungeon for, say, several hundred years. What if he’s figured out a way to get it, and maybe even to use it?”

“Half a portal?” Kate says. “The Tromindox are smart, but really—are they that smart?”

“We have to consider every possibility,” Gabriel says.

“Who is Monder?” Helen asks.

“Monder is a Tromindox with a big brain and an even bigger attitude problem,” Gabriel answers. “Monder has had a hand in the untimely demise of many a Silverwood, even turning some of them against us. Our dealings with Monder and those like him have threatened at times to tear the clan apart.”

“Yes,” Kate says. “Monder once shape-shifted his way into the inner workings of the clan, even going so far as to, shall we say, recruit people for his purposes. The Tromindox have been known to preserve and reanimate human bodies using technology rather than anatomy, outfitting them with mechanical parts and equipping them to spy on or even attack humans.”

“Gross,” Helen says.

“Gross, and dangerous,” Kate says. “We call the reanimated bodies ‘toms, short for automaton. A lot of time and effort have gone into learning counter measures and breaking into the ‘tom programming. My cousin Anna has been at the forefront of this project.”

“Anyway,” Gabriel says, “At one point someone sent Monder through a portal, and then attempted to close it off permanently, trapping him inside…”

“Is this Monder?” Henry says suddenly, and holds up one of his drawings. Gabriel takes it from his son and frowns.

“Aw man, this is just great,” Gabriel says. “Our Guild son can see him.” He turns the drawing around so Kate can see it. “That’s our favorite squid, all right.”

Kate looks over the pencil drawing of a long, graceful face with high cheekbones and huge, almond-shaped eyes. Henry has even included an elegant waistcoat. “That’s the one, no doubt,” Kate says.

“I’d say based on Henry’s drawing, and the pronouncements of our squid friend in the desert about the fragments, we’ve got to at least entertain the possibility that Monder is involved, even if it’s in name only,” Gabriel says.

“I suppose you’re right,” Kate responds.

“Your Guild training is paying off, kid,” Gabriel says, handing the Monder rendering back to his son. “Rose is one heck of a Guild Mentor.”

“We haven’t made it easy,” Kate says. “Running all around like we have. Rose has gone to great lengths to keep track of you, Henry. It’s about time she finally had the chance to give you some proper lessons. Guild kids can really freak themselves out if they draw stuff like this and they don’t know what they are doing.”

“Yeah,” Henry says. “Rose said a Guild girl once hid under her bed for a whole week after she drew a Tromindox eating a person, she scared herself so bad. But I’m not scared. I can draw anything. It doesn’t bother me in the least.” Henry sticks his chin out as he says this.

“Good,” Helen says to her brother, “because your drawings have gotten ten times more gory since you started your lessons. You’re like a sketch artist for monsters.”

“Yeah, and I’m lightning fast now,” Henry says, grinning.

There’s a tap on the door and everyone jumps, except for Clarence the dog, who remains asleep in his patch of sun.

“Nobody panic. It’s just Rose,” Henry says. “It’s time for my lesson.”

“Unless of course we need to jump in the car and run off somewhere to hide,” Helen says.

Kate glares at her daughter. “No, we don’t need to hide, not yet,” she says, opening the door. “Hello, Rose.”

A slight woman, maybe fifty, with a mass of dark gray-brown curls and a pencil tucked behind her ear steps through the doorway. She cradles an art portfolio in her arms. She wears the sleeves of her cardigan sweater pushed up to her elbows and sensible flat shoes. “Hello, Kate. Hello, Henry,” Rose says. “Henry, are you ready for your lesson?”

“Sure. I just drew a guy who is supposed to be in prison or somewhere,” Henry says.

“Really,” Rose says. “Is it anyone we know?”

“I don’t know him, but Mom and Dad do,” Henry answers. “It’s someone who I’m not supposed to be able to see, I guess.”

Rose looks concerned. “Who is it, Kate?”

The light sheet on the floor in the corner illuminates again. The picture has changed. Gabriel picks it up.

“You’re getting a love note.” Gabriel scowls. “Look.”

The card displays a picture of a note handwritten in ornate script, which reads:

Hello, Beautiful.

I shall see your lovely face again, soon. With great anticipation,

Monder.

“Monder?” Rose says. “Is that a joke?”

“I’m afraid it’s not,” Gabriel says. “Henry, show Rose your drawing.”

Henry hands Rose his Monder portrait.

Rose jumps at the sight of the elegant face. “What…what is this? How is this possible? This…no one is supposed to see…”

“We know,” Kate says. “Monder is supposed to be locked out of time. Gone, invisible to the Guild, the Council, out of contact. That’s what we thought, anyway. You know, if it was just me getting some pictures and notes, I would put this whole thing down to someone with a sick sense of humor. But Henry is seeing Monder, too. And if a Guild kid can see him, this has to be the real thing.”

Kate shakes her head. She looks down at the fragment around her neck. “The portal is leaking, somehow.”

“So,” Helen says, throwing up her hands, “thus far it sounds like, there’s this Tromindox named Monder, who isn’t supposed to be around, but he is, and he’s possibly sending weird messages to my mom, and may have even been to our apartment, and my brother can see him, even though this Tromindox is in, what? A portal? Out of time? With a leak in it?”

“And,” Henry adds, “don’t forget he has one of the fragments, whatever that is.”

“It’s the other half of this,” Kate says, holding up the object around her neck. “This portal was cut in two a long, long time ago. Each piece is called a fragment and they are to be kept apart, never reunited, never made back into a working portal. Which has proven harder to do than anyone anticipated.”

“Why don’t you just destroy that piece around your neck, then?” Helen asks. “Then the portal can’t ever be put back together again and it won’t work, right?”

“Portals are almost impossible to destroy once they are created,” Rose explains. “They can’t be melted down or thrown away. The only thing that is supposed to be able to destroy a portal is another portal. The fact that this one got severed in two was…very unusual.”

“So this Tromindox in the labyrinth,” Helen says, “he’s possibly got one half, and mom has the other half, and now he’s sending notes and pictures even though that’s not possible?”

“That’s what it looks like, kid,” Gabriel says. “That’s the short version, at least. The longer version is—”

The coffee maker in the corner explodes, sending scalding water hissing up the brick wall.

The deadbolt on the apartment door clanks open, then shuts, then opens again. The doorknob turns but the door stays shut.

“Everybody get down!” Kate yells, running across the room and hurdling over the dog. Light bulbs in the ceiling burst, raining glass down on the floor. Rose puts her hands over her face. Her portfolio drops to the floor.

And then, black. In every direction. Screeching, winged creatures brandishing sharp claws and scorpion tails pour in through the doors and smash the windows. The Tromindox swarm fills the air. Helen falls to the floor, lying down on top of her brother to protect him from the venom. Why couldn’t Henry have been born with the anti-venom in his blood, like her?

“It’s a million of them!” Gabriel yells, but no one can hear him. Wings and claws and beady eyes fly in his face, talons tearing at his clothes and his hair. Each time one breaks his skin the creature disintegrates into a gray puff of dust, but with so many of them it makes little difference—just like what happened out in the desert.

Kate hauls a weapon out of a box on the floor and commences firing with one hand while she tosses a weapon to her husband with the other. Each time she fires, another five or ten creatures disintegrate. But she still can’t see either of her children, or Rose, through the storm of black.

Helen can feel Henry pulling out from under her. “Henry!” she yells. “Stop! Stay with me!”

“I’m trying!” Henry cries. But he’s sliding away across the floor, feet first. He flails his hands, grabbing at anything— the rug, boxes, loose wires.

Helen grasps at her brother’s shirt, then takes hold of his wrists. She lies on her stomach, looking right into his eyes. “Hold on to me!” she screams. The force pulling him away from her is growing stronger, as if he’s tied to the bumper of an accelerating car. Henry kicks his legs as if he might swim back to her, but his efforts have no effect.

“Let go of my brother! Now!” Helen screams.

Time slows and Helen’s vision becomes grainy and gray like an old movie. She can see her brother’s face, but just barely. She shakes her head and tries to clear her sight but she can’t.

“I’m going to give you a choice, now,” a voice says in her ear. It sounds refined, highly-educated, even snooty.

“Who the hell are you? Leave my brother alone!” Helen yells. Why can’t she see? She blinks her eyes furiously.

“I need your brother’s assistance,” the voice says. “Let me borrow him for a while, and I won’t kill him.”

“No!” Helen yells, tightening her grip on Henry’s wrist. “You leave him alone, now!”

“Now, dear,” the voice says, “I can’t do that. I’ve gone to such trouble to find him. But I can ensure that he lives. Let him go, and I’ll spare his life. But if you don’t, I’m afraid I will let my assistants shoot him full of venom and eat him.”

Helen strains her eyes, trying hard to see anything. She can hear Henry calling her name, but his voice sounds far away. His left hand pulls free; now she’s only got hold of his right. The pull is so strong his body lifts off the floor.

“Make your choice, Helen Silverwood,” the voice says. “Let go, or he dies right now.”

Helen grits her teeth. Her hand is sliding. All she can see is Henry’s face, blurry and gray, mouth open.

Helen lets go of Henry’s hand.

“Mom!” Henry screams, sliding backwards out the door. The black creatures converge around him, and he is gone. The door slams shut behind him and silence falls.

Henry’s eyes snap open, and he sits up. He’s by himself in a metal-framed bed at the center of a square room with high ceilings, a door at one end and a window at the other.

A single round light bulb hangs high overhead, suspended on a long cord from the center of an ornate medallion on the ceiling. Everything—the walls, the carved wood moldings, the windowsill, the door, the bed frame—appears to have been thickly coated long ago in the same white paint. The room looks worn and decayed.

Henry has on plain grayish pajamas as drab as the walls, and his feet are bare. The bed sheets are gray, too. It’s as if the entire room has been drained of color, except for the red light blinking on and off above the door, a visual shock in the dull room. A long beep sounds and then stops. The light stops blinking.

The door creaks open and a tall figure enters, hooded, and wearing a white robe.

“Hello, Henry Silverwood,” the figure says. “Don’t be afraid; no one is going to hurt you.”

Henry pulls his knees up under his chin, instinctively retreating from his visitor.

The figure closes the door with deliberate precision, and Henry thinks he can see a glow coming from under the hood. When the thing finally turns toward him, he sees why; this person is fitted with a digital face on the front of its skull. There’s no skin, just an oval-shaped display made of pixels that it can light up and change at will.

Henry remains in his defensive posture as the visitor approaches and sits down very slowly at the foot of the bed. The digital display is set to the face of a kindly old woman, smiling as she speaks. Her blue eyes twinkle and crinkly lines move at the corners of her mouth.

“Who are you?” Henry asks over his knees.

“I’m here to take care of you and make sure that you get what you need,” the figure says.

“What I need is to go home now,” Henry says.

“Soon enough,” the figure says. “But before you can go home, there is much work to do.”

“What kind of work?” Henry asks.

“Very important work, Henry Silverwood.” The digital face now seems more serious. “But for the moment, you should rest. Someone will be by shortly with something for you to eat. And then we will go on a little tour, shall we?” The face smiles a fake digital smile.

“I’m not going to help you,” Henry says as the figure stands and walks toward the door.

“I think you are,” the figure says. “Because if you do help, you can go home. Now, rest.” The door clicks shut behind the visitor.

Henry runs to the door and tugs on the knob, but it is locked from outside. He peers through the sizeable keyhole beneath. He can see movement but not much detail. There seem to be more robed figures out there and more light. He can hear voices but he can’t make out any words.

Henry is determined not to panic, even though his impulse is to burst into tears. He returns to the bed at the center of the room, bringing his knees up under his chin again and lying still. He pushes his fear down inside until his chest hurts.

That’s when he notices the tiny wooden desk, painted the same gray color as everything else, in the corner of the room. It has beat-up corners and chips out of the paint. There’s a high back on it with little square drawers built in. On its surface sits a stack of thick sheets of parchment paper and a long, thin box filled with perfectly sharpened, white pencils.

Henry swings his feet down and approaches the desk. He puts out a hand to touch one of the pencils. As his hand moves closer, he hears voices, whispering. They sound like the voices of children. They are quiet at first, but the nearer Henry comes to touching the pencils the louder they become until they sound as if they are in the room with him. When he pulls his hand back, the voices recede.

He sits down on the wooden stool situated before the desk. The stool squeaks a little when he swivels on it. He gives it a spin and around him go the walls, the window, the door, the single bed. He stops spinning and faces the desk again.

A rattle. Someone is turning the doorknob. Henry jumps back into bed, pulling up his knees again in his defensive posture. But whoever is outside lets go of the knob, and the door creaks open a few inches. Then, silence.

Henry leans over to try and peer out the door, but the crack is too narrow. He climbs down and approaches, cautiously. There’s no sign of whoever opened the door outside. There’s no sound at all. He pushes the door open wider with one finger.

Instead of the brightly lit, bustling scene he first saw through the keyhole, now Henry faces a blank hallway similar in drabness to his room. He looks both ways, but he can’t see the end in either direction. There is no discernable source of light—just a dim pallor on the walls that spills onto the dingy linoleum squares that cover the floor.

Henry steps out into the hall and turns left, figuring there’s no difference. All of the other doors along the walls stand closed, and the plaster looks like it has endured many years of wear.

He thinks he can see a shape at the far end of the hall. A piece of furniture? A person? He can’t tell. He squints in the dull gray light but the shape remains a dark blur. Then it moves. He hears a giggle, like that of a little girl.

“Wait!” Henry calls out, and starts running. But the girl, if that’s what it is, disappears around a corner. Henry reaches the end and the hallway turns to the right. It’s just more doors, more beat-up walls, more linoleum floor in front of him. He looks again for the girl, and there she is again in the distance. She seems about his age, with dark, curly hair.

Henry runs and runs, but no matter how hard he tries, he can get no closer to the girl. She disappears around each corner before he can get there. The hallways seem to grow shorter as Henry runs, turning faster and faster until he’s almost dizzy.

“Help me!” Henry cries out. “Help—”

He runs smack into a white robe. A pair of hands grab him by the shoulders and spin him around. “You will return to your room, young man.”

There’s that digital-face glow again. Is this the same person that visited him earlier? It’s impossible to tell people with digital faces apart—they can look like whomever or whatever they want.

Henry twists his head around and looks up. It’s the same old woman face from before, but stern this time. It flips a few times like a bad television signal and switches over into a scowl. Either this is the same person from before, or everyone in this weird place gets issued the same set of faces to use.

“You will return to your room and rest. Have something to eat. You’ve work to do.”

“But I don’t want to…” Henry protests. His back bumps into something that gives and he stumbles backward. It’s a door. His door.

The robed figure shoves the door the rest of the way open, grabs Henry’s arm, and hurls him inside.

“Enough exploring. As you have probably noticed, there is nothing to see. And, you will always find yourself back here. So don’t waste your time.”

“But there was a girl! I saw her,” Henry says.

“There was no one,” the figure says, and turns to leave.

“There was!” Henry screams. “You can’t tell me what I see and what I don’t see!”

The door slams shut. Henry pounds on the pillow and yells at the blank rectangle of the door: “You can’t keep me here! My clan will come get me! You watch! I’m Guild, you know! My sister will kick all of your butts!”

There’s no response. A plate of food and a glass have appeared on the desk in the corner. Henry sits down and crunches his teeth into an apple, picking up a pencil with the other hand. The whispering voices resume.

Gabriel has transformed what was a bare apartment made of bricks, wood, and glass into an explosion of information. Every available surface in the room including the windows, floors, and support posts, has been plastered with printouts, photographs, drawings, diagrams, and handwritten notes. He has added lines, circles, arrows, and scribbled notations to many of the papers with marker pens. Light sheets, some blank, some displaying text or photographs, lay scattered over the floor.

Helen would describe what Gabriel is doing as an extreme bout of Super Logic Mode. It is helping (but not very much) to deaden the pain of his son’s abduction and the humiliation that Henry could have been taken so easily.

At different spots on the brick wall Gabriel has chalked a single word, like “FRAGMENT,” “GUILD,” or “HENRY.” There are papers labeled, “COUNCIL,” to denote the Council of Portals, the organization that is supposed to be in possession of the other fragment. There are, of course, labels throughout the room that say, “MONDER.” Lengths of yarn and string pinned to the walls radiate out from these words, designating possible connections. The effect is that of a room-sized collage inhabited by stringy and disorganized spiders.

First there were the photographs and notes, and the troubling conversation with the Tromindox in the desert. These were strange, but not dangerous. But at the moment Henry was taken, what had been a confusing puzzle suddenly grew into an emergency.

Most of Gabriel’s scribbling has to do with connecting Monder to his son. Gabriel has pulled out and taped up Henry’s recent drawings, showing scenes that look like the inside of an old house or depictions of Monder himself. There are dozens of intricate designs made of circles and lines, but no way yet to decipher their language or how they might depict time or space characteristics. To Gabriel, they might as well be drawings of crop circles.

Gabriel paces back and forth, one hand on his chin and the other clutching a piece of chalk. His brother Christopher sits cross-legged at the center of the floor, punching characters into a makeshift terminal and rubbing his hand back and forth through his hair, which responds by taking on various shapes.

Gabriel pauses by the window. He stops moving. Christopher knows that look; he has a pretty good idea what might happen next.

Gabriel rams his fist, still holding the chalk, through the windowpane. Glass rains onto the floor and flies out the window. A few sheets of paper come loose and flutter down to land around Gabriel’s feet.

Christopher waits for glass to stop falling from the window before speaking. He can see Gabriel’s chest moving with quick, desperate breaths.

“We’re gonna get him back, man, I promise,” he says. “And quick. No doubt, big brother.”

“And when we do, I’m going to tear out some throats,” Gabriel says through his teeth. “He’s a ten-year-old boy. Nobody has any business taking a ten-year-old boy.”

“He’s a stupendously gifted ten-year-old boy,” Christopher reminds him. “And somebody—maybe Monder—has figured that out. The good news is, he’ll be treated well. He’s no good to anyone if he can’t draw.”

“Yeah, well, we’re gifted, too,” Gabriel says, turning to look at Christopher. “We are gifted at kicking ass. And destroying squids.”

“Indeed we are,” Christopher says. “I don’t doubt us.”

“So,” Gabriel says, resuming pacing over the shattered glass, “if Monder does turn out to have one of the fragments, which by the way remains to be proven, we’ve got to figure out how he got it. To do that, we trace back to whoever had that fragment last.”

“The other fragment is supposed to be the Council’s problem,” Christopher says. “The mind reels at what stupid thing they might have done to lose it.”

“Right,” Gabriel says. “Let’s suppose the Council has one fragment and the Silverwood clan has the other. That was the arrangement. Kate is the Silverwood bearer now, Anna had it before her, and so on.”

“It stands to reason,” Christopher adds, “that if Monder did get the Council’s fragment away from them, which we haven’t proven, as you said…but if he did, chances are he’s going to try a similar strategy to get his tentacles on this one. If it worked once, he will try it again.”

“Exactly,” Gabriel says. “We have to assume that taking Henry is part of the plan to get hold of the Silverwood fragment, or with what Monder plans to do once he puts the fragments back together…” he falls silent and stares out the window between two sheets of paper, information connecting and reconnecting in his mind. He considers it, but decides not to smash another window.

Christopher stops tinkering and looks up at his big brother. “Let’s get Henry. Kid first, fragment second. Priorities.”

“I wish it were that simple,” Gabriel says, “but this stuff is all tangled up together in a giant web. If we pull one string we get the whole thing. When we go in to get him, we’ve got to know what we are dealing with so we don’t all end up stuck somewhere being eaten by a bunch of nasty flying scorpion critters.”

“Agreed,” Christopher says. “However, I will consider our efforts a success as soon as we see the kid’s face again.”

“You’re right, little brother,” Gabriel says. He claps his hands together. “We’re going to need a vehicle.”

The thick white letters painted on the heavy, gray metal door at the top of the stairs spell out: ROOF ACCESS. NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY. Kate shoves on the door with her shoulder and it scrapes open.

Biting air hits Kate’s face and she squints in the sunlight. Everything up here appears more pronounced, the colors brighter. The wind carries up bits of traffic noise, voices, and doors slamming.

Helen is easy to spot, sitting at the edge of the roof not far from where she and her brother were practicing, less than a day ago. Her black hair stands out in the bright light like ink on a piece of paper.

Kate has a seat next to her daughter. Helen’s hair hangs down in front of her face, but Kate can see that she has been crying.

Helen’s holding the guts of a transistor radio in her hands. She pulls the radio apart and puts it back together again and again, her hands moving almost too quickly to see. She pulls her utility knife from her pocket and twists a few screws. She pops open a bit of casing, makes a change, turns the radio on and off, repeats the process. Over and over, her fingers fly and the components move according to her will.

“It’s not your fault,” Kate says softly, rubbing Helen’s back.

“It is my fault,” Helen blurts, looking up at her mom. Her eyes are red. “I had him. I had him by the wrist. I let go. It is, in fact, my fault, directly, that Henry is gone.”

“You were presented with a choice,” Kate says. “You did the best you could with what you had. It’s very possible that if you had not let go of Henry, he would have been eaten right there and then. And being eaten by a swarm, Helen, that’s not something you can heal with your antivenom blood. You can’t retrieve a person from a hundred creatures at the same time.

Kate lets her daughter consider this for a moment before she goes on, “But here’s the deal, Helen: As it stands, Henry is alive, and we have a chance to go get him.”

“A chance,” Helen says. “We can still lose him, Mom. What if we can’t ever figure out where he went? What if we never see him again?”

“We will see him again,” Kate says. She’s trying to be firm but her voice shakes a little. “We will see him. You have to have faith. I know that we will get him back.”

“Okay, I’m glad you have faith,” Helen says. “Because if I were you I would not have any faith at all in me right now.” She opens up and reworks the guts of the radio again.

“I told you, you had a choice, and you made the choice that you thought would keep your brother alive,” Kate says. “Now, tell me again what you heard and what you saw?”

“It was weird,” Helen says, looking up to visualize her memory while her hands never stop moving. “Everything went all grainy, like there was something wrong with my eyes. And then I heard this voice, like an old man. Or not old, just, very snooty and condescending. And he said,’ let go, or we kill him right here and now’.”

Helen looks down again. “And that’s when I let go of Henry.”

The two of them sit silently. The only sound other than the traffic below is Helen’s hands pulling the radio apart, putting it back together, over and over.

“What exactly happens if the fragments get put back together?” Helen asks. “What kind of portal are they? Are they still connected to each other?”

“Yes, they are still connected,” Kate says. “The fragments remain entangled. What each one does affects the other. They are the two halves of one portal and nothing can change that. And this is a unique portal; there’s only one like it. It was the portal that was used to send Monder away, to contain him at a time when he threatened to destroy the Silverwood clan from inside.”

“And then the portal was chopped in two so Monder couldn’t come back?” Helen asks.

“That was the idea,” Kate says. “It was a plan made in haste. And as you can see, the plan may not have worked so well.”

“So we can’t destroy the fragments, but we can’t let them be put back together either,” Helen says. “We have to protect something in order to keep it from working.”

“Sounds ridiculous when you put it that way,” Kate says. “I just wonder…what if Anna is right, and the Silver Shard really does exist? What if we really could destroy the fragments and close the portal? I mean, Anna is prone to dramatics, and she relies on her feelings too much in my opinion. Your dad calls it ‘going all mystical.’ But what if she is onto something?”

“What’s the Silver Shard?” Helen asks.

A device buzzes in Kate’s pocket, and she fishes it out. A pigeon lands nearby and tilts its head around, eyeing the two of them.

“I’ll have to decrypt this message,” Kate says. She pops open the back of the device and messes with its insides. The message plays back, still gibberish. The pitch of the voice goes up and down, speeds up and slows. A few more adjustments followed by a burst of static.

“Hey Kate, it’s Anna. Look, I’ve found out some info on the Silver Shard. I think I know where it is. Or I can find out where it is, anyway. Now hang on. Before you delete this and say I’m crazy, remember I said I thought it was real. And that we could find it. But I need your help, Kate. This is our chance to destroy the fragment and the portal forever. I’m on the road. Don’t message me.”

“Well, speaking of mystical,” Helen says. “Anna knew you were talking about her and the Silver Shard, I guess.”

“Silver Shard,” Kate says. “I always thought that sounded like something out of a corny fairy tale. And not even a very good one.”

“I still don’t know what a Silver Shard even is,” Helen says.

“It’s an axe,” Kate says. “The handle was supposedly made from a branch of the silver tree in the Silverwood legends, with a blade forged from portal metal. The story is that the Silver Shard was used to chop this particular portal into two pieces.” She holds up the fragment around her neck and looks at it. “But the fact is, there are a million versions of the fragment story. And nobody knows how to melt down portals. And nobody’s seen a silver tree in oh, centuries. So, as you can imagine, I’m skeptical.”

“Understandable,” Helen says. She opens up the radio and pulls it apart again, still not looking at it.

“But there is something that I know for sure, without a shadow of a doubt,” Kate says.

“What’s that?” Helen asks. Her hands still fly, reconfiguring the radio over and over.

“I know that in order to get your brother back, we’re going to have to get creative. We have to have the skills to break into—and out of—places that we haven’t even found yet. And that means that we are going to need world-class hacking abilities,” Kate looks Helen in the eyes and places her hand on top of the radio, stopping Helen’s hands, “And you are, without a doubt, the best, most skillful, most creative hacker I have ever seen. This I know.”

Helen leans over slowly and rests her head on her mother’s shoulder.

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Now let’s go get your brother.”

Anna Helena Silverwood sits at one end of a park bench at the center of a gray city. Trees reach for one another with their branches, forming a canopy through which one can glimpse the tops of a variety of skyscrapers.

She watches intently as people pass by, some rushing, others more leisurely. Each of these humans has a story to tell. Here’s a man late for a meeting, here’s an old lady lost in thought, two bicycles nearly collide, a dog’s leash becomes tangled in a lanky teenager’s legs.

Anna observes every detail, in hopes that she will find one particular person in all of these crowds. Someone who, in all likelihood, does not wish to be found.

A man comes shuffling down the path and sits at the opposite end of the bench from Anna. He’s got a worn briefcase to go with his worn shoes and tattered coat. He’s wrapped a black scarf around his neck so thickly it threatens to consume his face. It’s not that cold outside; probably this man has no home and is wearing all of his possessions on his body.

Anna glances at the man and offers a smile. Then she goes back to observing.

“This is my regular bench here,” the man says.

“I hope you don’t mind me borrowing a bit of it,” Anna replies.

“Nah,” the man says, “not at all. You’re welcome to it. Best place for people-watching, if you ask me.”

“Yes, I’m sure it is,” Anna says.

“You waiting for that special someone?” the man asks.

Anna smiles. “Someone special, yes,” she answers. “But I’ve no idea if he will pass by here or not.”

“Oh sure, he will, have faith,” the man says. He begins to unwrap his scarf. “I got a sandwich. You want some?”

“Oh, no thanks,” Anna says as politely as possible.

“Suit yourself,” the man says, rummaging in the briefcase.

More and more people fill the sidewalks and paths in the park; folks are coming out for their coffee breaks or early lunches. Anna’s eyes dart around as she tries harder and harder to keep up with all of the faces.

“My ancestors were Vikings,” the man says through a bite of sandwich.

“Were they,” Anna says, still scanning.

“Yeah, big ships, horns on their heads, everything.”

He chews.

“You got ancestors?” he asks.

“Everyone’s got ancestors,” Anna answers. “A lot of us don’t even know who half of them are.”

“You looking for your ancestors?” the man asks.

Anna turns and looks at the man. “Why do you ask that?”

The man ignores her question. “You know what the Vikings carried into battle? Axes. Big, heavy axes. Chop a man in half. Boy, it would be something to see that.”

Anna slides the length of the bench and peers directly into the man’s face. His skin seems a tad gray, and the pupils of his eyes are a funny shape.

“Seriously?” Anna says. “Another one?”

“What?” the man says.

She grabs the man’s chin and speaks directly into his right eyeball. “Hello, I can see you’ve sent another ‘tom. No doubt you’ll send more. But this fellow here, he’s picking up a whole lot of bogus information. Scrambled. You’ve got no coordinates, and no trace on me. Heck, this isn’t even my voice you’re hearing. So stop sending me refurbished, forgotten old humans. It’s not funny anymore.” She lets go of the man’s face.

“What was that?” the man asks.

“Tell me something,” Anna says. “Do you feel odd? Like, not yourself?”

The man considers this. “Yes, I suppose so,” he answers.

“There’s a reason for that,” Anna says. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go.” Anna gets up and hurries off.

An older man with red hair like Anna’s passes in the opposite direction, but she doesn’t see him and he doesn’t see her.

Henry sits on the floor in the middle of a featureless white room, bigger than the room where his bed and desk are. He has no memory of how he got to this place; he woke up here. There is no door and only a single dark window high in one wall.

Ink stains the knees of Henry’s pajama pants. He holds a thick, black pen in his fist, as if he might stab someone with it. He puts the pen on the floor and begins to draw.

He scrawls a tiny square at the exact center of the room. He adds another square and another, and then lines and circles around those, working his way outward. Symbols. Dead ends. More and more circles, going around and around one another like petals of an enormous rose or the surface of a room-sized circuit board. He draws connections between the shapes, as if they are all part of one big exploded diagram.

Henry can’t tell if it is day or night, or how long he has been in this room. His white-blond hair flops into his face as he draws.

He adds another circle, this time with breaks in it every so often, and then he writes more unrecognizable symbols around the outside. There is a language here, but Henry does not understand it. Perhaps the symbols are labels, or instructions on a big map. He thinks back to what Mr. Goode said about Guild members mapping space and time rifts. He can only assume that this diagram is one of those, a much larger version of the ones he had created in his apartment.

Henry’s hand is beginning to ache. Occasionally he shifts his grip on the pen, or switches hands altogether.

Henry works his way out farther and farther toward the periphery of the room, drawing compulsively and making ever-larger circles and patterns. He spirals around the pieces he has already drawn again and again, as if adding rings to a tree. He smears the ink when he slides around on top of the drawings. When he rests his hands or arms on the floor the ink comes off, leaving a strange tattoo-like pattern on his skin.

Henry is going several minutes at a time without blinking. His eyelids burn red and sting.

Eventually, Henry makes his way all the way out to the walls. His drawing is huge; he has to crawl around like a crazed monkey to keep up with himself. His bare feet skit-skit! across the floor as he works, adding lines and notations and shapes everywhere.

Finally Henry reaches the last corner and runs out of space to draw. He looks up at the one window. In the ceiling, four head-sized circles of light appear and begin to emit a faint hum.

Henry stops drawing. He leans back against the wall, exhausted and alone. He tilts his head back up toward the ceiling and takes deep breaths through his mouth. For a moment, his hand drops to his side and rests. He lets go of the pen and flexes his fingers in and out.

The floor begins to glow, growing brighter and brighter until it has turned blinding white. Henry puts his hands in front of his face, drawing up his knees.

A great mechanical clicking noise comes from somewhere below, and a thick blue line of light moves across the floor from one side of the room to the other. When the line fades, the floor is once again a blank surface with nothing written on it. Every line and character Henry drew has disappeared.

A deep, computer-generated voice fills the room from above, “PLEASE. BEGIN. AGAIN.”

“No,” Henry says.

“PLEASE. BEGIN. AGAIN.”

Henry crawls like an old man who has fallen out of his wheelchair, brittle and bony, back to the center of the floor.

‘PLEASE. BEGIN. AGAIN.”

Henry wonders why this pen never runs out of ink. He wonders why he feels compelled to keep drawing, drawing, drawing. He can’t seem to stop himself. He wonders if he will ever leave this room.

“PLEASE. BEGIN. AGAIN.”

“I hate you,” Henry says through his teeth.

The voice will not cease until the pen touches the floor at the center. Henry holds the pen out, just an inch above the surface.

“PLEASE. BEGIN. AGAIN.”

Henry drops the pen to the floor as if it weighs as much as a boulder, and draws a single, tiny square. Then he rolls on his side and goes to sleep.

Monder leans back in his high-backed leather chair and closes his eyes. He raises a hand, and one of the monitors on the wall in front of him lights up with a green sound wave undulating from left to right. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony begins to play. Monder listens, silent, enraptured.

“Ah, human music is very nice, isn’t it?” Monder says to the skeleton on the chamber wall. “I do envy it. Think what culture we Tromindox might have developed by now had our time not been so consumed with fighting extinction.”

The notes swell, fade, accelerate, and slow. Monder relishes the music, consuming it. He snaps his fingers and various screens change to display a chandelier, a castle, scenes of flowers and trees and grass. Monder has not laid eyes on anything resembling nature in centuries, although his sense of the passage of time disintegrated long ago. The images pulse in and out and change color as the music plays.

Monder conducts the unseen orchestra with slow, languid movements. He stands, still conducting, and walks around the perimeter of the chamber. As he goes, openings appear in the walls. Each reveals a long corridor. Monder pays no attention to them, and they disappear one after another as he passes by. He learned long ago that his home was a fractal labyrinth and that the space was created by his own movements—leading nowhere.

Two hundred years ago, Monder would have run and run through one passage after another until his feet bled and he fell to the ground in exhaustion. He would have taken on shape after shape and thrown his body against the stone walls. He would have screamed until he could no longer make a sound and then collapsed, exhausted, only to find himself back in the center chamber once again. Alone.

Now, he knows better. He stays put, and listens to his music.

“There is still time for the Tromindox, you know,” Monder says to his skeleton friend. “Now that we’ve come back in numbers. We’re whole. A species ready to take our place. We have a few millennia to catch up, now. Good thing. There’s work to do.”

He leans forward and peers at a monitor at the lower left corner of the chamber wall, one that shows a white room with a young boy in it. The boy has white-blond hair, and he is sleeping. The screen refreshes with drawings of lines, patterns, and circles inside one another.

“Very good,” Monder says. “A very good start. A little rough, but he’ll get better with time, I suppose.”

Monder snaps a finger and the screen switches off.

Daniel Brush sits on the sunny back porch of the Brokeneck Bookstore situated on the main street (the only street) in Brokeneck, California. He is reading Richard III from a palm-sized leather volume, which he holds open with one hand. Daniel has brought with him an enormous pitcher of lemonade, which sits on the deck a few feet away in the shade so the ice will melt slightly less quickly. Every so often he tips his chair to the side, picks up the pitcher and takes a few gulps from it.

A heavy crash somewhere inside the store interrupts his reading. Daniel leans forward and peers in the back door, his line of sight reaching all the way through the center aisle to the front window. He sees nothing. Annoyed, he slips his feet into his sandals and rouses himself to investigate. He pictures Bertrand the cat looking smug after upsetting a stack of books.

But Bertrand is at his customary perch behind the register, and there is no pile of books on the floor. Daniel takes a quick survey of each aisle, wondering if a customer has come in. “Uncle?” he calls. But Mr. Brush, his uncle and the owner of the bookstore, is out.

“Alright, whoever you are,” Daniel says. “I’m not going to put up with any playing around in here. Show yourself. And don’t knock stuff over. I’ve just got this place cleaned up.” Daniel thrives on organization, which is why he is the perfect bookstore employee.

Daniel reaches the front of the store; everything is as he left it. He opens the front door and steps out, nearly tripping over a knee-high, broad wooden box taking up much of the walkway. A donation? Daniel peers up and down the dusty street but all he can see are a few folks seeking refuge from the sun on porches and amongst the ruins of the Brokeneck Hotel across the street. No delivery vehicle, no one nearby. Just the box.

He looks the box over carefully without touching it. It’s got hefty nails at the joints, and the wood looks old. There’s a label on top, but the words have faded. He squints at them. The box appears addressed to a “Marvin Brush, Watchmaker.” Marvin is Daniel’s uncle’s name. But this Marvin is a bookstore owner, not a watchmaker. An ancestor, maybe? Perhaps this box is an inheritance from a distant relative?

Daniel points a finger at the box. “I’m opening you out here,” he says to it. “You are probably heavy, and I don’t trust mysterious objects. Also, I don’t want a mess.”

Daniel retreats inside and emerges with a sizeable screwdriver to pry off the lid. The wood gives way easily, the nails pulling out with barely a squeak. He lifts up the top and looks inside.

The first thing that hits him is the heavy smell, a mix of leather and smoke and moss. The box appears to contain a collection of about twenty identically bound volumes, dark red-brown in color and labeled with faded gold. Daniel rubs one of the spines with a finger, removing a healthy layer of grime and revealing a strange version of a portal symbol. The symbol is circular, with a square hole in the middle and a spiral, but on either side of this are a pair of wings.

“I didn’t order an encyclopedia,” Daniel says to the box. He pries out one volume with his index finger. The book is small enough to hold open in one hand, and its brittle state has rendered it nearly weightless and without a spine to hold the pages together. Careful to keep the book in one piece, Daniel runs a hand over the back and then flips to the front. He opens the inside cover, or rather lifts it away since it is barely attached. On the inside of this he notices an embossed portal symbol.

“I wonder…” Daniel mumbles to himself, picking at the embossing with a thumbnail. He remembers a notebook that Helen Silverwood had with a portal embedded in its cover. Could that be the case with this book, too? A bit of the edge comes loose. Daniel pries a little more, not wanting to mar the cover but too curious to leave it alone. Sure enough, the paper peels away and he finds a portal coin embedded inside.

He opens several more delicate volumes, each embedded with a portal in its front cover and the strange winged-portal symbol stamped on the spine. He flips through the pages, but can’t make out much of the writing. A great deal of it takes the form of diagrams and symbols, and most of the writing is backwards. The diagrams seem to be labeled in some secret language, made up of circles and tiny squares connected at the edges by lines. The effect is not unlike a circuit board, even though these books appear to have been created long before anyone invented electronics or microprocessors.

Inside the store, Bertrand lets out a yowl. Now Daniel does hear something crashing to the floor. Clearly the cat has decided that Daniel is paying far too much attention to this dumb box.

“Honestly, cat,” Daniel says, poking his head inside to admonish his friend. But he stops speaking when he sees lying flat and open on the floor and Bertrand sitting next to it.

“When did you learn to turn pages?” Daniel asks Bertrand. The cat blinks at him. Daniel looks down at the book. “What the…wait, I just saw that. Where did I see that?” Daniel rushes back outside and picks up one of the encyclopedia volumes. Sure enough, there’s a diagram inside made up of concentric circles and an arrangement of tiny squares like a circuit board, that matches exactly the open page in the larger book inside.

Daniel looks at the small book, then the big one. “Looks like all these are from the same collection, cat,” he says to Bertrand. “I wonder…”

He goes back to the box and reaches in for the volume at the very end, crammed up against the side and thicker than the rest. “Most sets like this have an Index,” Daniel says. “Let’s see if you have one, too.”

This last volume is the most worn, as is often the case with an Index. Taken out over and over to reference the rest of the material, its pages see far more use. The front cover is cracked and has almost no writing on it at all. Daniel holds it up to the light, trying to make out what’s left of the gold letters. He thinks he can see an “I,” a “D,” and an “X.” “Good enough for me,” Daniel says. He flips it open.

What he finds inside, though, is not words. Where the pages ought to be he finds a solid block. And in the middle of this, there’s an irregularly-shaped cutout with a blackfaceted stone the size of his palm stuck into it. Carved into the block below the stone is a single word, “WATCHWORKS.”

“Hey cat, this is one of those trick books, you know, the kind that you use to hide things in?” Daniel calls out. But Bertrand has curled up on the floor and rested his head on his paws. He blinks his yellow eyes but otherwise has no response.

Daniel uses his thumbnail to pry the rock out of the Index book. It’s black and shiny like a piece of polished coal; its surface is covered in tiny facets that glimmer and shift in the light.

He holds the stone up between two fingers as if appraising a diamond. “What are you, then?” he asks it. “Better question: Why am I talking to a box of books and a rock?”

“You can talk to me instead, if you like,” Daniel’s uncle says. Mr. Brush has returned from lunch down the street. “I’ve got extra fries, too,” he adds, holding up a paper bag and smiling. He looks down. “Now, what is this?” Mr. Brush leans forward and squints through his round glasses at the contents of the wooden box.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Daniel says. “All this just appeared on the porch, out of nowhere. And, this will sound weird, but it seems that the books in this box are somehow acquainted with .”

“Acquainted, eh? What makes you think that?” Mr. Brush asks, pulling a kerchief out of his pocket and wiping his broad forehead.

“Well,” Daniel explains, “look. From what I can tell these books are some kind of reference, like an encyclopedia, filled with crazy diagrams. Pages and pages of them. But now, look at …” He jumps up and runs inside, returning with the larger volume and flipping through the pages. “See? Same things. It’s like they are related. Or the same person wrote them. Or they refer to one another. Or—something.”

“Something, indeed,” Mr. Brush says. “My boy, this is interesting in so many ways. Let’s get this collection inside so we can take a better look.”

Bertrand the cat stretches out in the lengthening square of sun on the floor as Daniel and his uncle haul the wooden box through the door and into the bookstore.

Anna turns down a narrow alleyway where restaurant workers haul bags of trash out to gray dumpsters and stray kittens scurry along the walls. This is not the place for a storefront, unless the desire is for as little foot traffic as possible. Or if the proprietor only wants to deal with people who know how to find him.

The beat-up sign over the nondescript glass door reads, PAWN SHOP. Or really, PAWN SHO, since the “P” wore off a long time ago. But Anna knows this is the place.

She pushes open the shop door and a bell on top of it tinkles. The musty air hits her right away; so many years of memories and forgotten objects line this little room.

Like most pawn shops, the front counters are stuffed with smaller items: watches, jewelry, handguns. The shelves mounted on the walls hold stacks of electronics, dating from the days of cassette tapes and Betamax. Finally on the back wall hang the prized possessions mostly consisting of electric guitars and rifles. A buffalo head stares out with blank eyes.

A lump of a man lurks behind the counter. There is no delineation between his head and his body, and he wears a moustache that is as out of date as most of the electronics in the store. When he sees Anna he bellows, “Well, is that our little sailor girl?”

Anna is impressed; Pawn Shop Guy has already managed to call her “little” and “girl” and she hasn’t even said hello yet.

“Hello, Mr. Brett.”

“Let’s have a look at you.”

“Let’s not,” Anna says. “I’m looking for an item.”

“I have items,” Mr. Brett says.

“A particular item. An axe.”

Mr. Brett sniffs at Anna in the dismissive way that she remembers well from the days when she would come to this shop as a teenager. Back then, she would have stood still as this toad looked her over. Not any more.

“Only axe I got is the kind you play heavy metal on,” Mr. Brett says.

“I know,” Anna says. “Remember, I used to come here to do research for Briefings. I’d pull items for different time periods so I could orient people properly when they came through a portal into a new time frame.” She pushes a button on a non-operational tape player. “I knew your store better than you did.”

“Then you know I got no axe,” Mr. Brett says.

“I do know that,” Anna replies. “But I also know that you can locate my father, and that he does know where the axe is. It will take far too long to find him by just looking around the city. I require a portal to his time and space location.”

“Well now, missy…”

“Come on, now, Mr. Brett, I know that you keep in touch with Dad. I need to talk to him. The situation with the fragments is deteriorating. I should have been out to sea much longer than I was. But somehow I was found, and I had to come ashore before a gang of ‘toms made some major problems for me and for the whole clan. I have a bad feeling that this game is just going to play faster and faster until we lose the fragment somehow. We’ve got to put an end to the fragments, once and for all. And that axe is our chance. Now, where is my Dad?” She looks Mr. Brett straight in the face, something she couldn’t manage when she was younger.

Mr. Brett looks at Anna for what seems like a long time. “Your dad never was the same, you know, Anna. He went away for a reason. He’s still not ready to re-enter the world, I don’t think. Sometimes a person just breaks, is all. The world flips over, and that’s it.”

“Look,” Anna says, “I suffered the same loss that he did. I was fooled like he was. Neither of us had any way of knowing my mom was Tromindox. No one could have known. But when she was killed, she was no longer my mom. I knew that. She had already been taken away from us.”

“Your dad holds himself responsible,” Mr. Brett says. “That’s the difference. He sees it all as his fault. And from the look of it, he always will.”

“I still need to see him. This situation is bigger than him, or me, or what happened to my mom, or any of it.”

“That axe is just a fairy tale,” Mr. Brett says. “I’ve never seen it. Nobody I know has ever seen it. What makes you think you’re so special that you’ll just up and find it?”

“Because I know the right questions to ask,” Anna says. “Now, Mr. Brett, if you please, the portal.”

“Fine,” Mr. Brett says, and waddles off into a back room. Presently he returns with a coin in his hand. “Tell your dad hello. Tell him I still owe him a beer.”

“Thanks,” Anna says, without smiling. Mr. Brett doesn’t intimidate her anymore, but that doesn’t mean she wants to spend a minute more in his presence.

Anna pops the portal into a device attached to her belt and she is gone.

A red VW van with windows all the way around and fancy white flame designs painted on its sides climbs up a narrow mountain highway through tall trees, swerving back and forth to the left, then the right, then left again over and over. The engine whines like an angry blender, getting louder as the van reaches higher altitudes. Gabriel leans forward on the steering wheel and concentrates on keeping the van on the road.

The for-sale ad for this van said it needed tires, and maybe a transmission, and maybe a windshield, but that it “runs good.” The picture included with the ad showed the van parked in front of a wall plastered with colorful graffiti.

“Sold,” Gabriel had said. It was just the sort of vehicle the Silverwoods needed.

Helen and her uncle Christopher sit on the floor in the back of the van, surrounded by wiring and components. They have gutted the interior; there are no seats inside except for the driver and passenger up front. Instead, the sides and ceiling are fitted with metal racks holding a wide variety of bolted-in equipment. Everything sways and rattles with each tight turn in the road. At the rear of the van is a collection of boxes packed with supplies, bedding, and Henry’s sketchbooks and drawings.

“Can you help me out here, niece?” Christopher says to Helen. “I could really use some higher resolution on this screen.”

“Trying,” Helen says, pulling loose a couple more wires and switching their positions. “When I’m done you’ll be able to zoom in by a factor of a thousand if you want.” She’s working on the back of a 1950s-era television housing, small and rounded with fat plastic knobs on the sides. Christopher stares at the screen on the front of the telly, punching characters into a gray keyboard salvaged from some ancient model of personal computer. Wires snake from both monitor and keyboard to a collection of panels in varying shapes and sizes, and with large and small blinking lights, mounted on the van walls.

“I think,” Gabriel says, “if we get to the Council Chamber, we can hack into their systems and track the other fragment from there. If we can find out who had that fragment last, and where they were, we can piece together how Monder managed to get access to it. Chances are that’s the same way he got hold of Henry, or got a hold of the swarm of helper squids who took Henry, anyway.”

“Right,” Christopher says, “except there’s one problem. The Council moves the chamber’s time and place around like crazy these days. That Tromindox invasion and the theft of all those portals really threw them for a loop and made them more paranoid—if that is even possible. Who knows where the chamber—or Council headquarters—might be.”

“So the Council is kind of like us,” Helen points out while twisting two wires together. “Staying in motion so as not to be tracked.”

“Yes, they are,” Kate says from the front passenger seat. She’s wiring more equipment into the dashboard, including a portal interface with a slot and a series of square buttons. She grabs a power drill and drives in a heavy bolt, securing the processor in place. “I wonder if the same thing happened to the Council, if their fragment was tracked like ours was before it was taken. I wonder…” she stares out the window, thinking.

Gabriel glances over at his wife briefly but then focuses again on the road. “What’s on your mind?”

“I just want to be sure we think this through,” Kate says. “We’ve got one fragment, and we know the Council had the other one, but we suspect Monder got a hold of the other fragment somehow before kidnapping Henry. On top of that, we think the Council is moving around to avoid being found, just like we are doing now in this van. I just want us to do a better job than the Council apparently did in avoiding detection, in case this is a trap of some kind. What if taking Henry was a trick, to get us to come after him and bring the other fragment to Monder? If we go rushing in after Henry, we could just get ourselves sucked in, too. Then Monder has both fragments, puts together the portal, and frees himself. That is the scenario we must avoid. We have to find a way to get Henry without being found out first.”

“We Silverwoods do a better job than the Council of Portals on pretty much everything,” Gabriel says. “On account of our superior smarts and skills. We were not the ones who got the portals stolen from us, were we? So if one of the two fragments was taken, I’m not surprised it was the one from the Council.”

“Right,” Kate says, “but this is Monder we are potentially dealing with. Monder, who we had to essentially lock out of time in order to contain him. This is no ordinary individual. I just want to be sure we stay a step ahead of him at all times.”

“Good point,” Gabriel says. “Hopefully we can decipher what happened to the other fragment and avoid the same fate. The first step will be learning who on the Council had possession of the fragment last, and where and when they were when Monder reached into time to get it. If that is what happened.” The van swerves around a mudslide spilling rocks and dirt into the road.

“Yeah,” Christopher says, looking up from his keyboard. “We’ve also got to think through this whole notion of how Monder might be accomplishing any of these deeds. None of this should be possible. The portal through which Monder was sent should have cut him off permanently from real time or space. So how could he manage to communicate with his Tromindox friends to coordinate the abduction of Henry? Or is this all a big trick, like Kate says, designed to bait us into freeing him?”

“My guess is, Monder has assistance,” Gabriel says. “Someone with information about how time and space rifts work, how that portal was encoded before it was chopped in half. Remember, Monder’s banishment was done in haste, and the technology was not well-understood at the time. It is entirely possible that some detail was missed. Monder has had a long time to think about this.”

“Or,” Helen says, her head popping up from the panel she’s wiring, “it’s possible that Monder got a hold of the other portal fragment, activated it somehow, and he’s reverse-engineering the whole process. You know, like taking a finished automobile and then pulling it apart to see how it works. Maybe he’s manipulating that other portal fragment and figuring out how to run its effects backward.”

“I would not put that past him,” Kate says. “I would not put anything past Monder, actually.”

“You guys need to explain more about this Monder guy,” Helen says. “How did he get so dangerous? Why is he imprisoned? And why can’t you just kill him instead of keeping him shrink-wrapped on the other side of some portal? How come…”

“Woa! Woa!” Christopher shouts, leaning back from the television screen on the floor. Sparks fly from the casing and the display jumps to life with fast-moving rows of characters. “Holy cow! I didn’t order that.”

The screen fills with enormous letters taking up the entire space:

YOU.

The word scrolls upward and repeats, again and again.

YOU. YOU. YOU. YOU.

Ten times, a hundred times. Christopher pounds the keyboard, but he can’t get it to stop.

“Time to reboot, I think,” Helen says. She yanks the cord out of the back of the monitor and the screen goes dark.

“What happened?” Gabriel asks, keeping his eyes glued to the road. The van is headed downhill now, easier work for the blender-engine but tricky from a steering perspective.

“A big word just came through,” Christopher answers. “Well, actually it was a short word, ‘you,’ but in big letters. Came up on the monitor out of nowhere. I’m not sure how that happened.”

Helen plugs the cord back into the monitor. The YOU message has disappeared, replaced by a blank screen and a cursor. Maybe the equipment in the van picked up a residual signal from someone else’s transmission, maybe they drove through a pocket of signals and noise and got an incomplete message meant for another party. For now, though, nothing more appears.

“Once we get Henry back,” Helen says, “maybe we can find out if that axe is real, and if it is, we can destroy the fragment. Finish the job and close the portal.”

“To do that,” Kate says, “Monder can’t know our intentions with regard to the fragment. He has to believe we are focused exclusively on rescuing Henry. Anna is out there right now with some crazy idea that she can find the axe, but she doesn’t know Henry’s been taken. She thinks we have time that we don’t have.”

“Right,” Gabriel says. “Son first, axe second. Just like Christopher said. And we’ve got to coordinate this with Anna. Get a message to her so she knows.”

The TV-monitor lights up a second time, this time with two words:

YOU ARE.

Again, the screen fills and the partial message scrolls up the screen over and over.

YOU ARE. YOU ARE. YOU ARE.

“You are what?” Christopher says. “That stupid message is back. I’m getting a sinking feeling this is intentional.” He hits keys again, but again the machine does not seem to be under his control.

“I don’t like the looks of that,” Kate says. “Whoever is sending these, Monder or his helpers, I would be willing to bet it’s the same entity that sent us the photo and messed with us at the apartment. Looks like we’re being tracked on the road, too. It’s time to change our coordinates and see if we can lose this thing, even temporarily, to buy some time. We can’t come up with a strategy to get Henry back if we’re just running. That’s how mistakes get made.”

Kate digs around in a bag at her feet and pulls out three or four portal coins. Some of their portal supply come from bounty-hunting jobs, others are Silverwood property. She grabs a hand-sized square diagnostic device and shoves each of the coins in, one at a time. The device’s screen displays information on each portal’s contents—time and place. She takes a careful look at them all before selecting one to use.

“Okay, here we are,” Kate says. “Ready?”

“When you are,” Gabriel says. He tightens his hands on the wheel and concentrates on the road so as not to lose speed—or control of the van.

Kate shoves the chosen portal into the slot in the dashboard, and everything goes blurry outside the windows for three seconds. When the scenery clears, they find themselves on a lonely road that is as straight as the previous one was winding.

“Oh, good, no more curvy mountain road,” Gabriel says. “Thank you.”

“I thank you also, and my stomach thanks you,” Christopher says. He stares at the TV screen and waits; no letters appear. For the moment, they seem to have gotten free of the ghost messages.

“So where and when are we?” Gabriel asks.

“Just a couple minutes forward, and a couple hundred miles away,” Kate says. “Enough to break continuity but not enough to be too disruptive. Hopefully.”

Gabriel pulls the van over to the side of the road, stirring up dust and crunching gravel under the tires. He shuts off the engine to give it a rest. He leans back on the driver’s seat, puts up his feet on the dashboard, and lets out a long breath.

“Are you tired? I can drive if you want,” Kate says.

“Nah, I’m good to drive,” Gabriel says. “We just need to take a moment here. I think it’s safe to assume that Monder and his helpers are getting better and better at detecting that fragment you’ve got there.”

Kate touches the pendant around her neck. “And they are getting faster at it,” she adds. “Every time we think we’ve gotten away, they find us even more quickly.”

“So the question now is, how can we play this to our advantage?” Gabriel says. “Let’s play out this scenario. The obvious assumption is this: Monder wants to get his tentacles on both fragments. Rumor has it, he has one. He now seeks the other one, and of course we want Henry. The fact that we possess the other fragment is our leverage.”

“Right,” Christopher says. “So we should get Monder so fixated on this fragment that he gives away Henry’s location. If we can lead Monder to believe that he knows where the other fragment is, and he tries to get it, maybe he tips his hand.”

“Right,” Gabriel says. “As long as we have this thing, and we can keep it, Monder has to bargain with us. Also, as long as he still needs that piece, he probably won’t hurt Henry. We have to find a way to mislead him without giving ourselves away.”

“But why did Monder go after Henry?” Kate asks. “Why not come after me instead? I’m the one with the fragment. Why not just take a run at me directly?”

“Henry’s Guild, dear,” Gabriel says. “And he’s not your garden-variety Guild, either. No, there’s more to this. There’s information involved, more than just that broken portal necklace. Guild kids can draw maps, write codes, put down information that they don’t even understand. Monder knows that. He knows Henry’s capabilities. I just wish we could figure out how Henry fits in.”

“I suggest,” Christopher says, “that we set ourselves up to detect incoming signals and trace them back, so the next time our harasser decides to send us a love note we can jump on it and try to find out where it’s coming from.”

“Splendid idea, kid brother,” Gabriel says.

“Oh man, I wish that Silver Shard was a real thing,” Kate says, leaning her forehead on the passenger window. “How beautiful would that be—to use the fragment as Monder bait, find Henry, destroy the fragment. I guess that’s wishing for too much, isn’t it?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Gabriel says. “Let’s see if Anna really has a lead on this Silver Shard or if this is just another case of her having mystical feelings. We can keep the whole magic axe idea in our back pocket.”

Helen has fallen silent, cross-legged on the floor of the van, absorbing the conversation instead of peppering her family with her usual questions. In her mind she turns the situation over and over, as if she were hacking into a device or a component of some kind. There’s Henry, and the Guild, and there’s Monder, and one fragment, and then the other fragment. And this mythical Shard. The pieces turn, come apart, fit together. She keeps coming back to the thought: “Monder bait.”

Don’t you worry, little brother. I’m going to make this right.

Henry sits propped up at his tiny desk, his eyes bleary from another long day of drawing in the big white room. He holds a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in both hands, staring forward with a blank expression while he chews and swings his feet back and forth.

A sound. Like a shuffling, maybe. Something sliding. He looks around, but the sound stops. He goes back to chewing.

The sound again. This time he notices a little square of light on the floor, there, and then gone again.

Henry creeps off his chair and sits down on the floor next to where the light appeared, and waits.

There it is again, the sliding sound. A square opening appears in the wall, down by the floor. Like a tiny door, sliding open and closed. Open, the light comes through, closed, it disappears again.

Henry gets down on all fours and peers at the spot in the wall where the opening was. He nearly jumps out of his skin when it slides open again and there’s a girl’s face inside.

“Oh! You are there. And awake,” the girl says. She’s got dark curly hair around her face and huge brown eyes.

“Hello?” Henry says.

“Hello,” the girl says.

“I saw you in the hall,” Henry says. “You kept running away.”

“I didn’t mean to,” the girl says. “I was just—there. The hall is an illusion, you know.”

“An illusion?” Henry says.

“Yes, kind of like this little hole, here,” the girl answers.

Henry rubs his eyes. It is possible that he has lost his mind. The door, if that’s what it is, slides shut again and he finds himself alone. Loneliness can make a mind do funny things.

“Darn,” Henry says, peering at the wall. He really liked not being alone, even if he was talking to a figment.

The door slides open again. “You’ve got to focus!” the girl scolds him. “If you don’t focus, we get disconnected. So keep looking at me, okay? Don’t look away.”

“Uh, okay,” Henry says. “If you’re on the other side of the wall, why don’t I just come next door and we can talk without lying on the floor?”

“But we’re not,” the girl says. “We’re not next door at all. I don’t know where you are, really. Keep looking at me!”

Henry blinks, but keeps looking. The girl looks familiar, and not just from the hall. He can’t place her.

“I’m glad I found you,” the girl says. “It’s not easy, creating an opening.”

“Creating an opening?” Henry says. “What is this? Why are you talking to me through a hole?”

“You’re not supposed to be able to see me,” the girl says. “We’re supposed to think we are alone. But we’re Guild, aren’t we?We can see better than they think. We’ve just got to try, is all.”

“Right, we’ve just got to try,” Henry says. “Guild have to look out for one another, don’t we?” He’s on his stomach now, head on his fists, looking straight at the girl through the wall.

“Yes, that’s important,” the girl says. “It’s important to stay connected. So come to this spot, at the end of each day, and we’ll talk. Okay?”

“Okay,” Henry says. “I’m Henry, by the way.”

“I’m R-Renata. My name is Renata,” the girl says.

“Nice to meet you, R-Renata,” Henry says. Then he feels bad. What if she’s got a stutter and he just made fun of her?

The tiny door slides shut again before he can apologize. Henry sits on his chair and retrieves his sandwich. His body feels better, not so achy. He’s got more energy. He is not alone.

Anna Helena Silverwood could not look more out of place than she does in the gleaming, ornate lobby of a high-rise building. Busy professional people jostle by her in fancy shoes that click across the marble mosaic on the floor, nothing like her own clunky boots. She looks like a survivalist in her dark green cargo pants and well-worn button-down cotton shirt. In another time, someone in the clan would have briefed Anna before she came here, equipping her with appropriate attire for her destination and explaining what she ought to expect. But Briefings don’t happen any more—she’s on her own. And Anna really doesn’t care right now about proper wardrobe choices.

This is just one building, among a vast number of other buildings, in a city Anna knows very little about. She looks around at the carved woodwork and elaborate ceiling and the beautiful diamond shapes cut from stone and inlaid into the floor but can’t place the architecture. The portal that she got from Mr. Brett at the pawn shop could have brought her anywhere. Chicago? San Francisco? London? It doesn’t matter.

Anna knows her father must be somewhere nearby; she just has to figure out where. She avoids eye contact with the security guards parked at a tiny desk and heads for the elevator bank. She locates the utility elevator, last one on the right, and presses the button to go down into the basement.

Before the doors can close a fellow in gray coveralls with a huge dolly stacked high with computers rolls in. Anna glances over the computers to get an idea of their vintage, revealing a little about what year she might be visiting. The monitors are putty-colored and big and square. That’s a clue. The CPUs themselves have floppy drives in them. That’s another clue.

“How you doin’?” the man says. The doors slide shut.

“Good,” Anna replies without looking at him. “You?”

“Oh, you know, this n’ that.” He flashes a grin. “Soon as I get these to one place, they’re gonna want ‘em in another.”

“Yeah, isn’t that how it goes,” Anna says.

The elevator bumps to a stop.

“Well, see ya,” the man says, and rolls the computers out through the door.

“Okay,” Anna says. So the wardrobe choice wasn’t as bad as she thought. Turns out she looks like a pretty convincing maintenance person. Anna files this in her mind for future reference.

She heads down the hall in the opposite direction from the man with the dolly. She scans the walls on either side of the basement hallway. The woodwork is elaborate even down here: panel after panel adorned with fancy edging and carved corners. Anna can see why her father chose this spot; it offers so many places to hide.

Anna wonders how her father is doing, and what he will look like.

Anna runs her finger along the wall, while holding the portal in her other hand. The portal is very warm, letting her know how close she is to her destination. In fact it’s a bit uncomfortable to hold. These older portals can overheat sometimes, and she needs it to travel back. So she drops it into her pocket. She will know if it goes cold and she needs to change direction.

Anna moves closer to the wall to scan it. Sure enough, one panel seems slightly raised from the others, the stain in the wood a tiny bit lighter. Perhaps this is the spot.

What if it is? Anna will come face to face with her father for the first time since…

She presses on the underside of the molding and the panel gives way. It swings into the wall and Anna steps into a hidden compartment. In complete darkness she can feel the tiny space turning until she stands in a recess now facing into a room.

More than a room it’s a long, narrow, claustrophobic space stuffed full of bookshelves and glass cases and filing cabinets. There’s dark wood paneling like in the hallway, and leaded windows run along the top of one wall where the space meets up with the sidewalk outside. The light coming through these windows shifts constantly with the shadows of passing feet. Yellowing, bare light bulbs hang at even intervals along the ceiling. Hatboxes and cases for musical instruments mix with mannequin parts on the floor. The space feels like the neglected home of a world-traveling hoarder.

The only path through the mess is a narrow clearing down the center of an oriental rug, leading toward a tiny grayish-green metal desk at the opposite end of the room. Behind that sits a massive, high-backed, black leather chair, facing away from Anna and surrounded on three sides by dozens of shoulder-high precarious stacks of papers and envelopes.

“Hello, Daddy,” Anna says.

The chair does not move right away but eventually begins to turn. As it comes around it emits awful squeaking noises and upsets several paper stacks, which then cascade onto the desk and the floor.

The man occupying the chair— Julian Silverwood, Anna’s father— has dark red hair, like she does. He keeps it swept up and away from his face. He’s got stubble on his chin, but that has gone gray. He’s ruddy, like Anna. He wears a dark suit tailored to fit his broad shoulders, along with a white shirt and narrow tie. Solid. Strong. Tired. He looks so, so tired. And he looks much older.

“You’re here,” he says. He takes her in with his bright blue eyes for a long moment. Finally he says, “You look good. Life at sea must have agreed with you.”

“I guess,” Anna says. “The place looks…nice,” she adds, surveying the room.

“No, it doesn’t,” Julian snaps. “It looks terrible. It’s a complete disaster.” A few papers flutter off of the desk and onto the floor as if to support his statement.

“Let me help you,” Anna says, stooping to pick up two handfuls of documents and trying not to appear nervous. “Maybe I can sort some of this…”

“It’s too late,” her father says. “The Conservatory has been crushed under the weight of neglect and apathy. There’s nothing to be done now.”

A few envelopes slide into a slot installed in one of the windows. They flutter to the floor.

“See?” he says, standing and pointing. “Another notification. Another delivery. It never ends. Ruptured time. Knots and tangles and portals being misused. I can’t keep up. No one can. There’s no one to fix all of this. I just keep it here, out of sight. The Conservatory isn’t a resource any more; no one comes here for anything. It’s just—a repository. The Silverwood garage. No—the Silverwood junk yard.”

“There has to be someone who can help,” Anna says. “Not all of the Watchmakers are gone. You can’t possibly be the only one left.”

“It would take thousands of Watchmakers to fix this mess,” Julian says, pacing. “New ruptures every day—Tromindox jumping around at will without closing up the portals—and I don’t have to tell you about the problems presented by those stupid fragments. What an idea that was. Create a field out of time. Send somebody through it. Break the portal. Great. But, then what? No one, no one thought that through, or considered the effect that a one-way rift of that magnitude might have.” He stops pacing and looks at his daughter. “You’ve handed the thing off to the next fragment bearer, I suppose?”

“Yes, I have, Daddy,” Anna says.

“And who was the lucky winner?” her father asks.

“Kate.”

Julian’s face darkens. His eyes narrow. “Oh.”

“And Daddy, I need the Shard.”

Julian’s face remains the same. “Oh.”

“Look, Daddy, I know how you feel about Kate. I know you don’t like hearing her name.”

“What do you need the Shard for?” Julian asks.

“To fix one of the messes,” Anna says. “The big mess. The one we created with the fragments. It’s falling apart, Daddy, like you said. We’ve got to do something—fast. It’s getting worse. I ‘ve had a message that Kate’s son Henry has been taken. Henry is Guild, but he’s only a child. Look, you were right. And I’m here to tell you, face to face, I’m going to fix it.”

“You can’t do that alone,” Julian says. “The Tromindox are evolving fast. They will swarm you, and you’ll never have a chance. You have to have help.”

“I know, Daddy. That’s why I’m here. And that’s why Kate is going to help me.”

“Help you? Kate Silverwood is supposed to help you? Do I need to remind you what she did, Anna Helena? Are you out of your mind? Have you gone crazy?”

“Daddy…”

“No! Don’t you ‘Daddy’ me!” Julian comes out from behind the desk, papers flying onto the floor all around him. “Kate Silverwood destroyed my life, Anna. And she destroyed yours. She took your mother from you, my wife. The woman I had built my life with. Who in turn gave you life. So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m skeptical that Kate is going to help you.”

Anna straightens up to her full height. “Dad, you know as well as I do that Kate did not murder Mom. Kate was deceived. And Mom was in contact with the Tromindox…”

“Your mother was not a traitor!” Julian shouts.

Anna well remembers that when she was small, her father’s raised voice could send her running to hide her head under her pillow. But now, she has been on a ship, at sea, by herself, for five years. She has sacrificed to keep the fragment safe, to do her duty for the clan. In short, she has grown up. And now, she needs to talk to her father on equal footing.

“Dad, what I know is, the rift where Monder was sent is falling apart, and soon it will disintegrate. If we do nothing and sit around amongst piles of paper and artifacts and feel sorry for ourselves, we will go extinct. We will lose everything. I am willing to do something. Kate is willing to do something.”

Julian looks at the young woman in front of him. He knows she is serious. Like her mother, she doesn’t give up once she has made up her mind.

“I don’t have the Shard,” Julian says.

Anna looks around her. “You don’t have it? Are you sure…? I mean, could it be in here? It’s kind of…” She reaches down and lifts up the lid of a guitar case on the floor. Nothing but a guitar. She lets the lid fall.

“A mess, I know,” Julian says. “But I am the Conservator, and I know exactly what objects are in this room. And the Shard is not one of the objects in this room.”

“What happened to it?” Anna asks. “Do you know where it is?”

“I know precisely where it is,” Julian answers. “I sent it away.”

“I need to know where it is,” Anna says. “Dad, I need it. Quickly.”

“I had to separate it from the rest of this stuff,” Julian says. “The Shard is far too concentrated. It is made from wood and portals from the silver tree. It’s almost like walking around with the tree itself. And with all the time and space rifts, the Shard is dangerous. It can induce a temporal collapse if it goes to the wrong location. So, I isolated it somewhere that it could not come in contact with much of anything.”

“Well, it’s the only thing that can potentially destroy a fragment, Dad, you know that,” Anna says.

“So that’s your intent? To destroy a fragment? Have you thought that through? How do you even know that will work?” Julian asks.

“Yes, Dad, we’ve thought it through. Although we’re kind of done thinking at this point, because our options are dwindling quickly. It’s time for concerted doing, at a high rate of speed. So please, if you would, can you tell me where the Shard is?”

“Fine, I will tell. But you mustn’t go get it alone. And you mustn’t take it through a portal. You’ve got to use normal time and space to get it to—wherever you are going to use it. Promise!? Do you promise me!?” Julian is practically shrieking, his eyes wide.

“I promise,” Anna says, trying to calm her father. “But only if you promise me something, too.”

“What’s that?” her father asks, looking annoyed.

Anna smiles for the first time since entering the room. “You’ve got to come out of this room. Get some sunlight. Take a walk, every day. Will you do that for me? I’m worried about you, Dad. Please take better care of yourself. I know it hasn’t been easy. But can you do that? It’s not much, right?”

Julian looks at his daughter, and finally his face softens. “Okay, Anna, I will go out for a walk every day. How’s that?”

Henry stretches out on his bed in his room. He moves his feet in little circles, bending his ankles this way and that. He is getting better at preserving his energy.

The days (Henry assumes days, he’s not really sure what is day and what is night anymore) are filled with drawing sessions, in which he fills floor after floor with intricate diagrams before the blue light sweeps across and they disappear. But he no longer draws like a wild child; he does not let the pen get out of control. Quite the opposite. He moves deliberately, looking over the drawings as he goes. He still does not know what the markings mean, but he has surmised that within them there exists a language of some sort. And he knows that this language—and what it communicates—are important to someone. He has a feeling that the drawings represent some kind of system of maps, larger examples of what that creepy Goode guy showed him back on the roof. He watches for symbols that repeat and notices how they connect to one another.

Henry’s new strategy is to slow down, take his time, and pay attention. He does not let the voice bother him when it commands: “PLEASE. BEGIN AGAIN.”

He has learned to close his ears to it and to not let himself get panicked. He takes the time to feel the pen in his fingers.

Back in his room, as he chews his sandwich, Henry hears the sliding noise again and the square of light appears on the floor. He climbs down and has a seat next to it.

“Hello there,” Henry says, his mouth full.

“How are things?” Renata says from the other side.

“Better.We’ve got to find a way out of here, though. I’m not going to sit around and draw on the floor forever. You’re not, either. We need to make a plan.”

“Can I show you a trick?”

“Sure,” Henry says. “Is this supposed to keep me from getting bored?”

“Just watch,” Renata says. But then the little door slides shut.

“Hey, where did you go?” Henry asks, peering at the wall. Did something happen? Is she okay? “Renata? You there?”

What if somebody found out Renata is talking to him? What if she’s in trouble? Henry sits frozen there on the floor, like an animal hoping not to be seen.

His door bursts open and a hooded figure storms in. Its digital face bears a resemblance to a particularly mean teacher Henry had in one of his brief stints at school. A fat nose, squinty eyes, scowling. Out-of-control gray eyebrows.

“What do you think you are doing?” the digital face bellows. The figure grabs Henry by his collar and shoves him back into his chair. “Finish your dinner and go to bed. How dare you mess about at a time like this? You’ve got work!”

Henry turns to his plate and picks up his apple. “Um, okay. Whatever.” He guesses that visiting with Renata will have to wait a while. He focuses on his food in hopes that the digital face will go away.

But as he chews a bony finger appears in his peripheral vision. Slowly Henry looks up.

The finger is inches from his face and the digital face looms over him. “Don’t mess about. You do your work. You rest. That is it. Otherwise you will find yourself…very, very alone. Understand? I will not warn you again.” The finger recedes and the figure exits, slamming the door.

“How is that any different from how alone I am now?” Henry shouts at the closed door. “Go away and stay there!”

Henry takes another bite of his sandwich, maintaining his nonchalant attitude for a few seconds to be sure that—thing—isn’t coming back. But then, little by little, his shoulders slump down and a tear runs down his cheek. He is not feeling brave at all. He is feeling alone and confused and his stomach hurts. He squints his eyes shut and pictures his dad’s face. Then his mom. And Helen. And Clarence. He imagines holding on to Clarence’s ear. He wants to get out of this place more than anything he has ever wanted. But he doesn’t know where here is, and he knows even less about how to begin to escape.

He retreats to the bed and lies down. As always, the room remains silent. This stupid, square room with nothing in it and a window that doesn’t open (not that he hasn’t tried it a thousand times) and this idiotic little desk. This must be what prison is like. Henry tries to think about that: how his dad was imprisoned, and his dad got out okay. Yes, Dad got out. And that was way worse. There has to be a way out of this gross room. Or building. Or whatever it is. He will find it. Someone will find it.

Someone will…right?

He hears the scratching again, like the little door opening. He sits up and looks, but there is nothing. No Renata. Then silence.

No, there it is again. Why can he hear but not see? Why doesn’t the wall open up? Has that connection been taken away? Have they been found out?

The sound continues. Henry looks around. Maybe the opening has moved and Renata is showing up somewhere else? That’s when he sees it.

A single, black line begins to draw itself across the wall. Henry watches as it goes. It snakes along sideways, then stops and ends itself in a pointing arrow. Then, capital letters write themselves on the wall: FOLLOW ME.

“Where?” Henry asks. “And who are you?”

No answer.

Now the line draws itself some more, starting at the words and moving straight upward. It ends in another arrow, pointing toward the ceiling.

“Follow you up? That’s impossible! Henry says. “Am I supposed to climb the wall?”

He puts his hands on his hips and stares up toward the ceiling. More letters write themselves: TRUST ME. FOLLOW THE LINE.”

“I can’t do that! I’m not a spider!” Henry cries. The digital-face people must be messing with him, trying to tire him out. He paces back and forth, his agitation growing. What is this place? He balls up his hands into fists, then runs at the wall and gives it a swift kick.

At least, he tries to kick the wall. But it falls away just as Henry’s foot should have made contact. Henry feels slightly seasick. What happened? How did the wall move?

Henry tries to kick the wall again, but again it recedes away from his foot. Again that woozy feeling.

Now Henry sticks his foot out, and places it on the wall. The entire room shifts slightly, so that the corner where wall and floor meet drops down just a bit. Henry leans on his foot a little, and the room tilts more.

And then, he takes a step.

The room goes with him. In a flash Henry is standing on the wall, which now feels like the floor. He looks back at the arrow, where the words have appeared: KEEP FOLLOWING.

The line turns and draws itself heading toward the door. Henry follows it along, across the wall/floor. It turns again, and goes back to the floor. This time Henry does not hesitate stepping from one surface to another. He finds himself once again in the room right-way-up, standing on the floor.

Words write themselves near his feet: THIS PLACE IS NOT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE.

“I can see that,” Henry says to no one.

The lines and words fade from the walls and Henry is once again in his plain white room.

Henry climbs into bed, but he cannot sleep. His mind is racing. Now he feels like all at once, he knows more but he knows less. He still cannot imagine where he is, or why, or how long he is supposed to stay. But he has also realized, with Renata’s help (if that was Renata), that this place is some kind of an illusion. It might not even be a place. And he is beginning to suspect the meaning of the patterns and symbols he has been drawing on the floor.

Gabriel stands on a carpet of shattered glass and broken stone that crunches underneath his boots as he surveys the room.

“Wow,” he says.

“You’re not kidding,” Christopher says, picking up part of a light sheet that has been snapped into pieces and left on the floor. The sheet sparks but does not display any information. Gibberish and static flash across its surface.

Finding the current location of the Council Chambers in space and time was not easy. It took several out-of-date portals and some intercepted communications to establish that there was some sort of emergency in progress. Next it was necessary to track back those messages to find their source and thus the chambers themselves. It was like trying to read a freeway map while someone was going at it with an eraser and a marker pen all at once. And all the time, the monitors in the van kept lighting up with words: YOU. ARE. OUT. And then nothing.

Now, the Silverwoods know the full message. It is spray-painted in huge black letters all over the chamber walls:

YOU ARE OUT OF TIME

“I suppose that’s Monder’s idea of a play on words,” Kate says. “Out of time. Like the rift in which he is contained. He wants to tell us that he’s breaking out.”

“So,” Gabriel says, “given the apparent state of the Council here, which is not good, we have an important question to answer.”

“Yes, we do,” Kate says. “When this chamber was destroyed, was the Council destroyed along with it, and…

“Did those fools lose the other fragment?” Christopher completes the thought.

“Exactly,” Gabriel says. “Given the general carnage before us, I’d say we can only conclude that Monder does have the fragment. This was an ambush, a sudden attack. The object of the game was surprise—with bonus vandalism and destruction. I’m betting the Council was here when this happened.”

“Most likely,” Kate agrees. “So what that squid told you in the desert was probably true. Monder’s allies, Tromindox or ‘toms or whatever they were, came here to get the fragment for him.”

Helen is working her way around the periphery of the room, placing her hands on the walls. This was once an impressive underground chamber with a table at the center and torches placed at even intervals all along its length. Now the table lies cleaved in pieces and the torches have all been snapped to bits. This was not just an attack; it was total destruction. Whatever was not smashed was burned. Nothing remains whole.

Except, Helen hopes, some of the internal systems that the Council used to store information.

“Finding anything, kid?” Gabriel asks Helen.

“Not yet,” Helen says. “There are connections here, and I’m guessing there’s a control room somewhere nearby. We just have to locate it.”

Helen comes to an opening in the wall, a charred hole blown by some sort of explosive. Loose wires stick out of it, but none of them connect to anything. The ends look burnt, like used birthday candles.

Still, Helen tugs the wires part way out of the wall and sets to work untangling them. Once she makes some sense of the mass, she peers into the hole in the wall and lets her hacker-mind take over. The systems inside the walls and the components that make them up appear inside her mind, layer upon layer. She snaps a glass lens over her eye, mounted on a leather headpiece. A light goes on above the lens and now she can make out the pieces and parts in more detail. It seems that much of this equipment seems dedicated to transmitting communication signals. Some of the components may still be operational. She hopes so. If she can hack into these systems, maybe she can find messages or other clues left behind that can lead her to Henry.

Helen grabs a piece of stone from the floor and pounds on the wall until more chunks fall away, making the opening larger. Now she can see that there are bundles of wires running side to side and up toward the ceiling. She notes the colors and which ones connect to each another inside. She finds a junction box, then another, and a control panel. Peeling the cover off, she runs a finger over the circuit board and interprets the layout. For Helen this is like a private language written just for her.

“The control room is above us,” Helen says. “It’s not in this chamber. It’s in a separate space.”

“Alright then, let’s find it,” Gabriel says. “We just have to…”

A five-foot-wide chunk of stone and dirt comes loose from the ceiling and crashes to the floor only a few feet from Christopher, smashing to pieces and raising a thick cloud of dust. Christopher covers his face with one arm and waits until the air clears. Then, in a move that no one recommends, he steps under the new hole in the ceiling to look up and see what’s there.

“Here’s your control room,” Christopher calls out. “Or some part of it. Now we just have to climb up there.”

Fortunately, the chamber ceilings are not high. A boost from Christopher, and Helen scrambles into the upper room easily.

“Watch for more cracking in the floor,” Kate warns her daughter. “The whole thing might give way.”

“Good thing it’s not far down,” Helen says, and grins at her mom. It’s true: Afurther collapse probably isn’t going to be catastrophic. But a broken leg would certainly slow them down, besides being painful.

Helen looks around at this newly-discovered space. It’s small, only a few yards across, and round shaped. As of a moment ago it has a gaping hole in the middle of its floor. Helen is careful to avoid the cracks running outward from the edges of the hole, tiptoeing around the perimeter where the floor seems most solid.

The walls of the room are lined with panels, controls, and monitors from floor to ceiling. Some of the monitors are still lit up. Helen turns her attention to these, looking for any sign of life.

“There are storage modules up here,” Helen says. “Maybe a database or records.”

“We’ll take your word for it,” Gabriel calls up. “I think the rest of us should stay down; the less weight up there the better.”

“Uh, thanks,” Helen says. As if to make her dad’s point, another chunk of the floor falls into the chamber below. She had better work fast.

Helen scans the room again, more slowly this time. There are so many components competing for her attention. Wires run every which way across the ceiling. But Helen is drawn to an inconspicuous little console stuffed between two much larger machines. Though it’s got only a tiny screen and a keyboard, something tells Helen that this is the control module. It is meant to blend into its surroundings. Her hacking eye tells her that this piece of equipment is the most connected thing in the room.

She makes her way across the broken floor with care, taps the keyboard, and fires up the little machine. Nothing much happens, except that a green cursor appears floating in the black of the screen and blinks on and off. Helen tries typing in some characters to get a feel for the encryption. Sometimes home base is the terminal with the least security because the only people who can reach it physically are the owners.

Not the case here. Helen can’t seem to get access to any files at all; the screen only displays boring “no access” messages and requests for pass codes. The cursor mocks her, blinking on and off and doing nothing else.

“What are you?” Helen asks the little machine. “Are you the Council’s master control? And where did the Council’s precious fragment go? Because, see, I’m betting that wherever that fragment went, that’s where my brother is, too. So you can keep the stupid metal thing. But you’re going to give me back Henry. Make no mistake.” Her face reflects in the mostly blank, black glass.

The cursor blinks. And then, it moves.

HELLO, LITTLE GIRL

Helen jumps. What is this? Who is this? She looks around, up at the ceiling, over her shoulder. Any machine in this room could have a camera or a microphone on it. In fact, they all probably do. But what if this message is coming from elsewhere? That would be quite a trick. From the look of it, this control room was built for the purpose of spying on other locations, not the other way around. Either way, she has been seen. A chill runs up Helen’s spine.

She types:

WHO ARE YOU

DON’T PLAY WITH THINGS YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND

Helen’s eyes narrow and she can feel herself getting angry. Better not to let on, though.

Helen types:

WHAT DOES YOU ARE OUT OF TIME MEAN

The cursor blinks some more. Then:

EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS

After a pause:

HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE GOING EXTINCT

Helen types:

I DON’T UNDERSTAND

The cursor blinks:

OF COURSE YOU DON’T HUMAN BUT YOU WILL

And then:

YOUR BROTHER HAS BEEN A BIG HELP

Now Helen’s pulse races and her breath speeds up. Henry has helped no one. He is a prisoner. How dare this—person—imply otherwise.

Helen types:

WHO IS THIS

But Helen has a feeling creeping into her mind that she is talking to Monder.

“Anything interesting?” Kate calls up to Helen.

“Um, no, not yet, just trying to break into their systems,” Helen says. “Just give me a second.”

Helen types frantically:

I’M COMING TO GET HENRY

The screen:

GOOD LUCK

Then nothing for a few moments.

The screen:

I PROPOSE A TRADE

Helen types:

WHAT SORT OF TRADE

The screen:

YOUR BROTHER FOR THE FRAGMENT

Helen:

DO YOU THINK I AM STUPID?

The screen:

WE ALREADY ESTABLISHED THAT YOU ARE A STUPID HUMAN CHILD. THAT IS BESIDE THE POINT.

Numbers appear. Coordinates. A particular location in space and time.

THIS LOCATION. THE FRAGMENT. JUST YOU. TELL NO ONE.

Helen types:

THAT’S A TRAP AND YOU KNOW IT

The screen:

FINE YOUR DECISION. TELL ANYONE LOSE YOUR BROTHER. MESS WITH ME LOSE YOUR BROTHER. HOPEFULLY THIS IS SIMPLE ENOUGH FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND.

Helen stares at the screen. Every muscle in her body is so tense she might snap in half. Her heartbeat pounds in her ears.

“Helen, time to get out of here,” Gabriel calls up. “Just pull the hard drives and hand them down and we’ll analyze them in the van. If the Tromindox have been here, or their ‘toms, we have to assume they know about this place and could come back any time. The Silverwood fragment needs to exit the premises and so do we.”

“Okay, just a sec,” Helen says. “There are a lot of drives up here.” Angrily she yanks the cords out of the little console and its screen goes blank. End of conversation. For now. She sets to work pulling loose every hard drive in the room and passing them down through the hole in the floor.

Later that night, the red VW van with the flames painted on the sides will sit parked at the side of the road beneath a dampening field to hide its location. Inside of the van, stacks of Council computer equipment will sit waiting to be broken into and deciphered. Nearby Kate and Gabriel will lie asleep in a pile of blankets. Crickets will chirp in the distance and for a time, all will be quiet.

Some distance away, on the other side of a thicket of trees, Helen will crouch alone in the moonlight. She will encode a portal with a set of coordinates and shove that portal into a device from her pocket.

Kate is dreaming. A tow truck is hauling away the red VW van, but in reverse. It beeps and beeps. She tries to call out to the truck driver, to tell him to drive forward instead, but she can’t make any sound. The tow truck pulls farther away from her, still beeping. She runs after the truck, but she can’t stop the beeping…

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Kate rubs her eyes and realizes that a messaging device is beeping away somewhere in her pockets. She rolls over and rummages until she finds it. What time is it, anyway? The sky is barely smeared with faint light. She leans on one elbow and opens the message. It’s from Anna.

KATE I HAVE THE LOCATION OF THE SHARD. I NEED YOUR HELP.

Kate takes a breath. The Shard. Is it possible the thing is real? Their chance to destroy the fragment and close the portal, locking Monder out of time permanently? But how can they do that with Henry on the other side?

I NEED YOUR HELP TO GET IT. SHARD CAN’T GO THROUGH A PORTAL.

Kate considers this before typing back:

WE CAN’T DESTROY FRAGMENT UNTIL WE HAVE HENRY.

Nothing for a few moments. Kate reaches up and instinctively touches the fragment around her neck, as is the habit of the fragment bearer. Ever vigilant.

Except…

It seems different. Heavier. Kate pulls the chain out and looks at the pendant.

But the object on the chain, she realizes to her horror, is not the fragment. It’s just a stone.

“Oh, my god!” Kate shouts, sitting bolt upright.

Gabriel rolls over. “What?”

“The fragment! It’s gone! It’s been replaced!”

Christopher’s head pops in the van door. “What do you mean? How is that possible?”

“I don’t know,” Kate says. “Helen! Wake up! We’ve got a problem.”

“Helen?”

Gabriel pulls on Helen’s covers, but there’s no one there. Just a pillow and some blankets lumped up to look like a person sleeping.

“HELEN?”

Gabriel jumps out of the van and begins circling. “Helen? Where are you, kid? This isn’t funny.”

Nothing.

Christopher pulls a slip of paper out from under one of the windshield wipers. He unfolds it and reads it out loud:

It is my fault Henry is gone. I know where he is and I am going to get him. I have the fragment. Please do not come after me. I am sorry.

–Helen

“She’s taken the fragment,” Kate says. “She’s taken it and she’s gone to the labyrinth. How could I have let this happen?” She paces with one hand on her forehead. Now both of her children are in Monder’s grasp. Her head spins at the thought of this worst-possible scenario.

The message device lights up again.

KATE PLEASE HELP ME GET THE SHARD

Kate can barely type in letters with her shaking fingers.

HELEN IS GONE

INTO THE LABYRINTH

WE CAN’T DESTROY FRAGMENT

HELEN AND HENRY BOTH IN THERE NOW

Kate drops the device on the ground and puts her hand back on her forehead.

“Kate?” Gabriel says.

“She doesn’t THINK!” Kate screams at her husband. “Helen just acts, without the slightest idea what she is doing! She’s just like…you!” She turns away.

Those words sting because they hold more than a little truth.

“We’re going to have to put our faith in her,” Gabriel says.

“This is not a question of faith!” Kate says. “Now you’re sounding like Anna, all touchy-feely like this is some kind of belief thing. Helen knows nothing about Monder, or how the fragments work, or any of it! She’s like a lamb to the slaughter in there!”

The device lights up on the ground. Gabriel picks it up. It says:

KATE I’M COMING THERE

WHAT ARE YOUR COORDINATES

Gabriel types in numbers.

A few moments pass, then there’s a sound resembling a small sonic boom and Anna is there.

“Kate?” Anna says. The two of them embrace.

“Hello, Anna,” Gabriel says.

“Gabriel, I’m so sorry,” Anna says. “Hello Christopholous,” she calls over to Christopher. Christopher does not answer. He’s looking down at the ground. He’s got a stick in his hand.

“Is this how he deals with stress?” Anna asks.

“I don’t know,” Gabriel says. “I suppose he’s thinking.”

“Yeah, well, that’s about all we’ve got at this point isn’t it?” Kate says. “Thinking. Thoughts. Vapor in the air. And no kids. And no access to the rift. There’s an opening somewhere, and we have no idea where it is. We’ve got about as much of nothing as it’s possible to have.”

“We’ve got the Shard, if we want it,” Anna says.

“Great. The Shard,” Kate says. “So we can close off a portal with Helen and Henry on the other side. Brilliant. Oh wait, we don’t have the fragment any more, so even if we do get the Shard, it’s useless!”

Kate is seething. “What other fantastic ideas does anybody have?” she yells.

“I might have an idea,” Christopher says quietly, staring at the dirt in front of his feet.

Everyone turns to look at the fellow with the mohawk and the stick.

Christopher looks up. “See, I was digging through those archives we took from the Council Chambers; I got up early anyway since my head hurts, and I got into some of their research records. You know, experiments, attempts to manipulate portal technology, things like that. This one research area kept showing up over and over and it had to do with time ruptures. Overlapping time-space created when portals are not closed properly. I think the Council may have been studying those ruptures and how the rift where Monder is banished might have been created in the first place.”

“When Monder was banished into the rift,” Kate says, “there was no time for analysis. And everyone thought it was a unique phenomenon. A singular event. Maybe the Council wasn’t so sure.”

“Exactly,” Christopher says. “Whoever was doing this research seemed to believe that the ruptures created by portal travel, and the resulting rifts in space-time, could be put to use. Just as a portal temporarily brings together two space-times, it might also be used to create rifts on purpose. Locations outside of space-time, maybe even multiple times in one location. At least that’s what it seemed the Council was getting at. It was preliminary stuff. Papers, ideas for experiments, things like that.”

“From what I can tell,” Christopher goes on, “there were plans to try and pull this off. To create rifts, go into them, and then untangle them again and come out. This would create the ability to, say, do something in the same place, but at more than one time. Theoretically, of course.”

“The implications of that are huge,” Gabriel says. “That means you might be able to do something crazy like set off an explosion in two different places or times simultaneously. That’s terrifying.”

“Yeah, or maybe you could bring separate elements together all at once, say if you had a medical emergency and needed five different experts,” Christopher says. “I mean, this is all really fuzzy. Just concepts. But it’s there, and the Council was clearly working on it.”

“Who was the chief scientist on the project? Can you tell?” Gabriel asks.

“Looks like it was the Chairman himself,” Christopher says.

“Huh,” Gabriel says. “Haven’t heard from him in a while. Not that I mind.”

“Maybe he did try going into a rift, and it didn’t work out so well,” Anna suggests. “Or maybe he’s in two places at once. That’s a scary thought.”

“I’m just saying,” Christopher says, taking the stick and drawing in the dirt at his feet, “the rift out of time, where Monder is imprisoned, might operate according to the principles outlined in the Council’s research. We think of it as a sealed-off location between space-times, inaccessible to anyone in real time or space. If we really could find and get into that rift, we might be able to get Henry—and now Helen—back, and then seal off the portal, all in one move. To do that we have to collapse the rift by inducing a convergence of space-times and then close the portal…” He draws two circles overlapping each other and points the stick at the area in common.

Kate looks down at Christopher’s simplistic drawing. She opens her mouth to object, to tell him that this is all just ideas and concepts, that no one could ever pull that off. But then her eyes meander to the space next to the drawing, where she notices a series of calculations. She looks further out still, and realizes that there must be fifty square yards of numbers and diagrams and graphs scraped on the ground. Christopher has clearly been working on this for hours.

“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?” Kate asks Christopher.

“I am serious about it,” Christopher answers. “This idea got into my head, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So I tested out some ideas. And I think it could work. But there are a lot of parts that have to come together. First we have to locate and access the rift in space-time. Next we have to get Henry and Helen out of it, even if they are separated. Then we have to close the portal. After that we’ve got to destroy the fragments, thus sealing off the rift permanently. That’s where the Shard, if you can get it, would come in really handy.” Christopher waves his hand at his calculations.

“Well,” Gabriel says, looking at Kate, “if this is for real, and it’s looking pretty real, it would appear that we’re going to need that Shard.”

Kate looks her husband in the eye for a long moment. “What do you think, husband? Do you think this is for real?”

“I think it’s what we’ve got,” Gabriel says. “And Silverwoods have always worked with what we’ve got.”

“Okay then,” she says, turning to Anna. “Let’s go get that axe.”

Helen tumbles downward through the pitch black , banging her knees and elbows and rolling over and over. She tucks her head, desperate to avoid slamming her skull. She grabs for any sort of handhold, any way to slow her fall, but the surface is too slick. No matter what she does she keeps falling, faster and faster until finally she shoots out of a hole, rolls over again, and smashes her back flat into a wall. She crumples into an awkward heap and gasps for air until her wind comes back.

“Ow,” Helen says out loud, sitting up and checking her body for damage. Nothing feels broken, but she’s collected many unpleasant scrapes and bruises. What is this place?

Helen pulls her utility knife from her pocket and flips on a light in the handle. It would appear that she fell out of a chute into a tunnel constructed of stone and dirt, only a few feet high and a little wider than it is tall.

Helen stands, slowly, and tests the footing by scraping her boots around. The floor seems level, but in the dim illumination from the knife it is difficult to judge; for all she knows she could be standing at the edge of a cliff. She would rather not fall any more so she takes her time.

All she can make out is a featureless tunnel stretching into total darkness in both directions. There doesn’t seem to be any difference so she heads off to her left, keeping the light on the ground just in front of her feet and her other hand out to protect her head.

The tunnel offers no doors, no windows, just more and more dirt and rock. The ceiling gets higher, though, and soon Helen can walk without crouching. It’s dark, and musty, and—boring. What does this place have to do with Henry, or Monder, or anything at all? Did she enter the wrong coordinates and drop herself into a hole?

Helen touches the fragment around her neck. That’s her leverage. Monder will have to deal with her, one way or another, if he wants to try and get hold of it. But so far, this place looks like a lot of nothing.

And then, it becomes more nothing when she reaches an abrupt dead end. The tunnel concludes in a blank dirt wall. Helen looks it over; no doors, indentations, nothing suggesting an entrance or exit.

“Fine,” Helen says to herself, and heads off in the opposite direction.

The tunnel curves and curves to the right, still offering no hints of entrances or exits. She continues around, hoping to find some way out; but soon all she finds is another cul-de-sac.

Feeling distinctly claustrophobic, Helen takes a deep breath and collects herself. Perhaps she has to climb back up where she came down. It might have been slick and would be a difficult climb, but that chute is beginning to look like the only option. She walks back to where she fell through in the first place.

There’s nothing there but wall.

Helen feels around the stone and dirt for a false door, a secret latch, any sign of where she came from. But it’s as if the chute never existed. She wonders if she is looking in the right place. How can she be sure? There are no landmarks. And wasn’t the ceiling lower here? Or are her eyes fooling her?

She needs a landmark. Helen marks an “X” in the wall with her knife and takes off again, boots scraping on the rough ground, counting her steps. Again she reaches the dead end. She turns and counts her steps back, keeping her eyes peeled for the X. It should be here somewhere…where did it go? She tracks back and forth but finds nothing. She tries it again, this time counting her steps. Out, and back. But her mark, again, is gone.

Helen swings a small pack off her shoulders, pulls out a device and checks the coordinates again. She’s in the right place, unless Monder lied to her and sent her to a sewer as a joke. Or maybe the fragment threw her readings off. It dawns on her that both of these scenarios are entirely possible. She tugs the pack back on, clips the device onto her belt, and presses forward.

A new feeling comes over Helen; if the dim light is not fooling her, she could swear that the tunnel is getting larger. The ceiling seems higher above her head, and she can sense more space.

Is it possible that the tunnel is growing? Uneasy, Helen reaches up and touches the fragment around her neck—again.

Now she walks upright, stretching her arms out to the sides. The tunnel walls stay just beyond her finger tips, the tunnels themselves becoming more spacious as she goes.

Helen takes off running. The corridor curves one way and then the other, no dead ends in sight now. Here’s another passage off to the right. She takes that, still running. She doubles back, and sure enough the corridor has changed again. It seems the faster she goes, the faster the tunnels alter their shape and configuration. What if this place is changing according to her movements?

Helen stops again, catches her breath, and takes a mental inventory of her increasingly disorienting situation. This seems like a good time to try Super Logic Mode.

“Let’s see, what are my options?” Helen asks herself.

Option one: This is all an illusion, designed to disorient and confuse her. She came to the correct coordinates, but the place has been disguised and in order to find her way she must break through and uncover some kind of inner workings. This means finding a control, or some flaw in the system, like revealing the Wizard behind the curtain. Maybe if she can figure out how this place really works she can shut it down, or better yet, find Henry.

Option two: This place is—somehow—alive. Capable of responding to Helen, or the way she moves around, or something. This would explain why it seems to change based on her movements. Helen’s environment is, for lack of a better term, shape-shifting. How can she find Henry in a place that only mutates more and more as she tries to move through it?

Option two is scarier. It makes her think of being lost inside of a Tromindox.

Helen’s dad has always said, Do the best you can with what you’ve got. What Helen’s got are hacking skills. Vision. The ability to pull her surroundings apart in her mind. Could this possibly work in some dank, morphing, underground tube?

Time to find out.

Helen confronts the nearest wall and plants her feet. She reaches out and begins to dig at the dirt and rock with her fingers, pulling pieces loose and letting them fall to the floor. One chunk comes free, then another, then a damp hunk of soil the size of her fist. Soon she’s created a foot-wide indent in the wall. She keeps digging, creating a bigger and bigger opening, working with her fingers.

But she uncovers nothing. No wires, no metal, no structure. Just more dirt and rock. There has to be some system behind these walls and their strange behavior, some reason why they behave in this way. Behind every phenomenon are the factors that brought it into being. But where to look? Where is the curtain to pull back?

Helen closes her eyes. Perhaps the answer is not in the dirt, but in her own mind. She holds still and waits.

At first she perceives nothing but darkness, her thoughts just like the dreary tunnels around her. But then layers and shapes begin to emerge. Only impressions, but it’s a start. And it’s better than digging around with her fingers like a mole.

Helen focuses and quiets her mind. The forms in her head become clearer, more colorful. In a way, they resemble the electrical wiring she discovered inside the walls at the Council Chambers. But in another way, they are unlike anything she has ever seen. Her inner vision fills with a network of colored lines running every which way, toward her and away from her, up and down. They bend and wind around one another, like roots.

Helen moves her hand along the wall, her eyes still closed. As she moves, the lines move, too. To the right and then to the left. Up and down. Veins of color jump over one another and change position. Now the colors bind together in a thick mass, like a giant cable running upward and away. Helen follows along in her mind, climbing. Sections split off, reaching out and branching into new paths and shapes.

Branching out. Like a tree.

Now Helen can see circular shapes hanging from the branches. Like leaves, they shift and glimmer. She looks down the trunk again, toward the roots.

But something changes. The roots twist in on themselves. They become tangled, bent. There’s something wrong with them.

Hard, metallic plates bolt into the trunk. Claw-like vines twist around the tree and dig into the bark, puncturing and smothering it. Soon Helen can barely make out the tree’s shape at all. It has been imprisoned in a tangle of cruel-looking restraints.

She hears a sound, like the scream of splitting wood, and then Helen opens her eyes.

The wall in front of her remains blank. No panels, no controls, no connection to what she just saw in her mind. She has accomplished nothing.

“What is this stupid place?” Helen yells, and throws a fist at the wall. Or, she tries to. But her punch meets with nothing. She wonders whether the darkness has messed up her depth perception and caused her to miss. She throws another punch, and again nothing.

Helen takes a step forward, then another. She lifts a boot and moves her foot toward the wall slowly. The tunnel seems to sway.

Then everything spins out of control.

The corridor twists and flips, convulsing as if Helen is inside a giant rope being tossed about by a child. She falls over and over, crashing into the ceiling and then the floor. She tries to roll up into a ball, but her arms and legs fly around her. She can’t even get enough air into her lungs to cry out.

Then Helen’s head bashes into the wall. Everything spins and her vision fades to black.

“Ah! There you are,” a voice says.

Monder?

Helen opens her eyes. The back of her head pounds. How long was she out? And why is she hearing Monder’s voice? As far as she knows, she is nowhere near Monder.

She sits up. Every part of her body hurts, but at least the floor is staying beneath her…for the moment. The corridor has contracted back down to only a few feet across. Helen feels like one big bruise. Every time she moves, she discovers a new pain.

She feels at her belt for her device—it’s still there but it has been crushed. Everything in her pack is probably pulverized as well. She doesn’t bother to look. She does pat her pocket for the knife, which thankfully remains with her.

“I hope you brought the fragment, or this is all a colossal waste of time,” Monder says.

Where is that voice coming from?

“Who’s there?” Helen says, for lack of something better to say. Her head is filled with fog.

“You know who this is,” Monder says. “Now bring me the fragment.”

“Show me my brother,” Helen says.

“Your brother is fine,” Monder says. “Here.”

A clicking sound, like an old-fashioned movie projector revving up out of sight. A rectangle of light appears on the wall above Helen. It’s a grainy black and white movie, with jumpy frames and streaks running down the side. The film shows a small room with a bed, viewed from above. There’s a boy in there, and Helen can tell immediately by the shape and the white hair that this is Henry. The boy moves in fast-motion around the room, from the bed to a desk, then he disappears, then reappears, and curls up on the bed. The film jumps as if someone cut together a collection of scenes. It looks like the same movements, over and over, a time lapse of many days. Then the clicking of the projector slows, and the movie disappears.

“That…movie, or whatever it is…tells me nothing,” Helen says. “That could be fake. It looks fake. Is that the best you can do?”

“That’s what you get,” Monder says. “I am limited in what I can show you.”

“Why?” Helen asks. “What is this place?”

“It’s not a place at all,” Monder says. “This is my little home. I don’t expect you to understand, not with your human mind. You humans can be so literal about everything. That’s why you can’t control yourself. I fully expect you to fall on your head many more times before we meet face to face. Not that it will make much difference in a human brain.”

Helen can feel anger rising in her chest again. She reminds herself to breathe. This is certainly part of the game, Monder’s attempt to keep her feeling vulnerable. A Council member once made the mistake of insulting Helen and treating her like a child, and he paid for it. Helen uses her anger to focus her attention.

“Now, I require the fragment,” Monder says. “You will bring it to my location. You may have noticed that the broken edge has begun healing, as an effect of the piece now moving into close proximity to its counterpart.”

Helen touches the fragment around her neck. Monder is right; the edges have become smoother. She looks at it. The markings appear clearer and more defined. Now she knows she has come to the right place. Even if Monder says it is not a place at all.

“I haven’t seen my brother. I have seen some made-up home movie of my brother,” Helen says. “You think I’m going to fall for that?”

“Helen Silverwood, I will shortly have no further use for your brother. At which point, I can either hand him back to you, or dispose of him. Your choice.”

“You will not dispose of him, because if you do, I will destroy this fragment and you with it,” Helen says. “I did the research. I know that if you don’t put the portal back together you go out of time on a permanent basis. Now I need real evidence of Henry’s well being and whereabouts.”

As Helen is speaking, she gets up slowly so as not to send the tunnel into another spin. If this thing really does react to her movements, then she ought to be able to control it.

“You do not possess the means to destroy the fragment,” Monder says. “No one does. Don’t fool yourself.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Helen says, feeling her way along the wall, “what exactly do you want the fragments for, anyway? If you’re so smart, why can’t you just find your way out of the rift on your own? How come some little bitty portal stands in your way?” She moves her hand out in front of her, slowly and then faster. Quicker movements alter the walls, but slower ones do not. Something about the way Helen moves seems to create space out of nothing. She realizes that earlier she had moved too quickly, which sent everything out of control. Best not to make that mistake again.

“Not your concern,” Monder says.

“Okay, another question. I know you won’t answer any of these,” Helen says. “Why don’t you just come get the fragment yourself? I mean, I’m right here. I can hear you. You can’t be far away. What’s the hold up?”

“You come to me,” Monder says. “That’s the deal. Although in a short time, I will be able to do just that. It’s a simple question of navigation, really. Knowing how to pinpoint a location. Your brother has been exceedingly helpful.”

Henry, helping Monder? Not on purpose.

“Well, then, maybe I’ll just sit tight and wait for you while you find me,” Helen says. Now she’s pushing walls in and out, raising the ceiling. She still hasn’t got her sea legs, but she has gained much more command of her surroundings. Now, hopefully, she won’t send herself flying.

“Waiting would be an unfortunate mistake on your part,” Monder says, “because the second I get the information I need in its entirety, Henry will no longer be necessary. He becomes Tromindox food. And I will hunt you down. So, ask yourself: Is that a gamble you want to take?”

“We’ll see,” Helen says. She’s moving faster now. She finds that she can reshape the tunnels into larger spaces, create rooms. She pushes up into the ceiling. Her presence is altering the fabric of the space around her.

And then it hits her: The lines and connections that she saw in the walls, moving as she moved, those were her own thoughts. That is why she could not hack into them or find them physically.

“So are you going to give me directions to your location?” Helen asks. “Is there a street sign or something?”

“The fragment will tell you,” Monder says. “It will signal as you get closer. That is how you will know you are traveling in the right direction. Now, get moving, because before you know it, I will be coming to find you. And your brother will be past his expiration date.”

Helen looks at the portal again and wonders how quickly it will change as it moves in relation to its counterpart. Because now that she knows how she can tell if she is getting closer, she also knows that for now she needs to travel in exactly the opposite direction.

“Well, my friend,” Monder says, “it appears our project, the one you helped me to begin, is nearly complete. We can make contact with our fragment bearer, even if we can’t get to her just yet. Only a matter of time. And the boy’s maps are moving along nicely.”

The Tromindox stands at a control console at the center of the room, directing his words half to an ornately-framed monitor in front of him and half to the skeleton still in its place on the wall. He punches a few keys and magnifies the screen image. It shows something resembling a map, like a subway, with a dot moving around on it. A box in the corner displays a space for coordinates, but no numbers appear yet. The dot jumps around, as if the system is re-scanning for it every few seconds. Boxes form on top of the map, zoom in and out, and attempt to pinpoint the dot’s location. But they do not yet track along accurately. They appear, change shape, and disappear.

The dot represents the movements of Helen Silverwood, his fragment bearer. The girl who will free him from this life. The reward for his hard work and diligence in the face of imprisonment. Soon he will apply his vast learnings to the real world, the world that exists in time.

Time. Monder can hardly believe it. This rift has been his prison for so long he has all but forgotten what real time feels like. Cause and effect. Relationships to real things and people.

He thinks back to his first hours and months and years in this place out of time. Running, falling, stumbling into tunnel after tunnel and realizing only after he had reached total physical exhaustion that he was causing space itself to expand and contract. That there was no way to escape a thing that you made out of your own movements. No entrance, no exit. A self-creating prison.

It took him many years to find even a tiny hole in the rift. After such a long time (or lack of time), he had his very first link to the outside. To real time. And Monder only found that hole because he had help from the other side, from an unwitting accomplice.

Monder turns to the skeleton. “Your little Silverwood friend is coming for a visit, sir,” he says. “I don’t suppose this was what you expected from your experiment, was it? Not the result you hoped for when you began.”

The fragment around the skeleton’s neck, still encased in a clear box, looks brighter now. The broken edge appears smoother, the half-spiral more defined.

“I mean, your work was brilliant—don’t get me wrong, you have my utmost admiration,” Monder goes on, taking a few slow twirls around the room. His embroidered robes flow with him and he raises his pointed chin above his high starched collar. “Such a breakthrough you had, taking advantage of the ruptures that the portals created, converging space-times onto one other, exploring and mapping the rifts between time and no-time, expanding on the work of the Watchmakers. Brilliant stuff. Really.”

Monder touches the chin of the skeleton. The jawbone moves slightly, and a shred of the skeleton’s once-dapper double-breasted suit comes loose and flutters to the floor.

“Yes, Chairman, even I will admit that you were a genius when you lived. It’s just, when you tried out your invention, you didn’t expect little old me to pop up on the other side, did you?”

Daniel Brush and his uncle sit facing each other on the Brokeneck Bookstore’s creaky wood floor. Daniel is cross-legged, his shoes off, dreads tied back and a mug of tea steaming near his knee. Marvin Brush, older and stiffer and with considerably less hair, sits legs-out on a cushion borrowed from a rocking chair provided for customers. The sun went down some time ago, and the two sit together in a blob of light provided by a single candle.

Mr. Brush felt the need to shut off the lights, something about being “seen.” Even though there’s no one around the old town to see them at this time of night. The diner at the other end of Brokeneck’s lone dirt street is dark except for the lazy blinking light from its small neon EAT sign. The hotel across the way remains in ruins. At this hour, Brokeneck’s residents are not interested in Daniel and Mr. Brush.

Mr. Brush has installed a tiny round magnifier over the right lens of his spectacles and his face is lit up. Daniel has watched his uncle gleefully dig out all of the leather volumes in the mysterious wooden box, holding up each book and regarding it like a long-lost friend. Books sit open and shut, face up and face down, all around the floor. Bertrand the cat crouches nearby atop , which also lies on the floor, but, of course, remains closed because of the ever-vigilant cat.

“Ah! See, here’s one,” Mr. Brush says, cracking open a book. He pushes his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. “This particular portal was opened on this date, and then over here…” he picks up another open volume and pages through it, running a finger over the page, “there’s the corresponding closure. This is how the notations used to be done. Aren’t they beautiful?”

Daniel, trying to keep up with all this new information, peers at the two entries. There are concentric circles, some complete and others not, connected by lines running through them at various angles. At the intersections of many of the lines and circles, tiny symbols have been painstakingly added with a fountain pen. All of the markings incorporate a square, but there are a wide variety of embellishments: a swirl, a circle and triangle, three hash marks. Throughout the page there are also tiny numbers separated by even tinier dots.

“These symbols show the status of a portal at the time of its last use,” Mr. Brush explains. “According to the map, this one here is closed, but this other one was left partially open. It’s a pity. So many portals left ajar. People going through and then not coming back the same way, or just neglecting to close the thing again when they are done.”

“Why would people do that?” Daniel asks.

“People, or Tromindox,” Mr. Brush says. “Oh, in the old days there were lots of reasons,” he explains. “Maybe they were in battle or being pursued and in a hurry. Or in the case of the Tromindox, they didn’t know or care. They would use a portal to hunt humans, make their kill, and come back. Proper portal maintenance was the last thing on their mind. That’s what made the Watchmakers’ job almost impossible.”

“Who are the Watchmakers?” Daniel asks.

“You mean who were the Watchmakers,” his uncle says. “A magnificent group, those folks. The mechanics of time. They repaired the rifts, closed the portals, documented it all in these maps.”

“What happened to them?” Daniel asks.

“Oh, who knows?” Mr. Brush says. “Chaos. Politics. Conflict. Things I personally like to avoid. But I can tell you, there have been some real messes. One Tromindox was banished into a rift between space-times, when it nearly murdered half the Silverwood clan from inside. And there were others in the Silverwood clan who had to make a one-way portal jump, just to keep themselves from being totally annihilated. Yes, much of the damage to space-time has been the result of hasty decisions made in emergencies.”

“I’m guessing the Silverwoods who made the one-way jump were Helen and her family?” Daniel says.

“Right you are,” Mr. Brush says. “That family got out of harm’s way—just barely. But things were never the same after that incident. Everyone was out for themselves. The Watchmakers were spread to the four winds like everyone else.”

“You know an awful lot about this, Uncle. Were you a Watchmaker?” Daniel asks.

Mr. Brush looks up at his nephew. One eye appears huge through the extra lens. “Well, yes, I was,” he says. “Or, I tried. I tried to help. Like I said, I kept a low profile.” He sounds regretful. Daniel suspects there is more to the story, but he knows better than to push too hard. If Mr. Brush gets rattled, or thinks he’s under interrogation, his words pile up and his thoughts collide, and he ceases to make sense. So Daniel takes his time.

“The Watchmakers had a very important job holding space-time together,” Mr. Brush says. “When somebody goes through a portal, two space-times come in contact with one another for a split second.” Mr. Brush puts his palms together to illustrate. “When the portal is not closed properly, it leaves a tear and things on either side can get mixed up in undesirable ways. Objects, events, even people end up having encounters that they absolutely should not be having. Things got complicated.”

Mr. Brush sighs and shakes his head, the candle reflecting in his glasses. “The damage adds up like bad credit. Portal travel is supposed to be a localized phenomenon. A protected field. You go through, do your business, come back; then you close it off until it’s used again. That way your temporal footprint is limited and the time travel paradox doesn’t destroy every darn thing in creation.”

“Time travel paradox?” Daniel asks.

“Yes,” Mr. Brush says. “You know, the old wives’ tale about how if you travel in time and change something, it messes up all of reality because you fooled around with causality. Like if you went back and murdered your own parents, and then you were never born because you didn’t have parents. Things like that.”

Daniel’s face darkens.

“I’m afraid that wasn’t the best example,” Mr. Brush says, knowing that Daniel never knew his parents. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Daniel says.

“Unfortunately,” Mr. Brush says, “this particular set of maps comes to an abrupt end.” He lifts up the newest of the volumes and flips it open. “The first few pages are filled up, but the rest of the book remains blank. No one has been updating it. Whoever sent us these maps had their work stopped abruptly. Perhaps they got into trouble and didn’t want these maps falling into the wrong hands.”

Mr. Brush pries out the black stone from the Index volume with his finger and holds it up. “This strange little item here, this is a time stone. Take a look.”

Daniel leans forward and squints, since the candle offers only dim, flickering light. At first the stone looks just like a typical piece of black rock. But it also has a kind of blinking quality. Is that the candle flame creating the effect? No…

“Woa,” Daniel says, taking the stone and holding it the way his uncle did. Smooth indentations on the top and bottom fit his fingers perfectly. The rest of the stone is covered with tiny square facets, and every few seconds a facet pulses in or out. The pattern seems random, but the effect is hypnotic. Daniel watches it go. One facet moves here, another one there. Constantly changing. In, out. It is as if the stone breathes.

“That is the time stone for this particular map set,” Mr. Brush says. “Each time a portal opens or closes, you’ll see it move on this stone. The stone reacts to time and space disturbances. That’s how the Watchmaker would know to make a repair or write down a new entry in the map.”

“That’s amazing,” Daniel says. The facets continue their dance, in and out. “So according to this thing, there are disturbances going on right now.”

“Oh, yes, all the time. People, Tromindox, portals opening, others closing, all over the place,” Mr. Brush says. “An experienced Watchmaker can spot a rift in the real world, even without this stone. A door that opens and closes, objects that just won’t stay in one place, locks that won’t stay locked, things like that. The stone makes it a whole lot easier; it reacts whenever there are openings and closings. But nobody is documenting these.”

Daniel watches the stone pulse in and out while yellow candlelight flicks off of the moving facets. Outside the clouds take on a glow around the edges, as they do when the moon is full. There is, however, no moon.

“This whole mess isn’t much use without the viewer, though,” Mr. Brush says, leaning over and reaching into the wooden box. “There’s one more piece to the puzzle—ah, here we go.” He lifts out a contraption that resembles a very odd ornate brass table lamp, with a curved bracket on top holding a glass chamber at the center. It rattles as Mr. Brush places it on the floor between them.

Daniel turns the stone over in his hands. He touches the facets, one by one.

“Now, be careful with that,” Mr. Brush says. “Even without the viewer, the stone is very powerful. Only hold it the correct way. I don’t want you falling into any portals by accident.”

“Okay, maybe I’ll just put it down then,” Daniel says, tucking the stone back into its box. Instead he picks up the last of the volumes and pages through, finding the last entry.

“This is weird,” Daniel says, “these later pages look really different from the other ones.”

“Let me take a gander,” Mr. Brush says, taking the book. He eyes the pages, flipping them back and forth. “My boy, you’re right. These notations have little to nothing in common with the ones before. In fact, I’d say these aren’t even the standard maps.”

“What are they, then?” Daniel asks. Bertrand the cat stands, stretches, turns and lies down again.

“Well, I’m a bit rusty on this, mind you,” Mr. Brush says, “but I’d have to say these newer bits look like maps of space-time inside of portals. As if someone took a portal, opened it, and then made notes on what they found. Take a look. See? Here,” he points at an intersection of a circle and two lines with notations on it and a square symbol in one book, “and then, here.” He lays out the newer drawing next to it. In that one, the square symbol has been copied into the corner, and then blown up much bigger, with an entire page of additional markings and notations around it.

“It’s as if someone was documenting rifts rather than repairing them or closing the portals,” Mr. Brush says.

“You mean, to map how things were getting tangled up from either side?” Daniel asks.

“That’s what it looks like,” Mr. Brush says. “Looking to use the insides of the portals or the space-time between them for some purpose, instead of fixing them. My, that’s…that’s very clever.”

“That could be very powerful,” Daniel says. “If what you say is true, and things on either side of a portal can get tangled up together, if you could control it, it’s like you could be two places at once. Or do things in one place and time that affect something else in another place and time.”

“Right you are, my boy,” Mr. Brush says. “It could also be dangerous. It’s a terrible idea to mess with a rift. You need an anchor to keep you in time. You can’t just jump in there and do what you want. And you certainly can’t stay in there. Although we did try that, once, as a method to imprison someone. And it worked pretty well. It was another of those decisions made in haste.”

Mr. Brush looks thoughtful, and Daniel imagines gears turning behind his uncle’s pale forehead.

Outside, the clouds split into two, white and blue lightning jumping between them.

Mr. Brush rouses himself from his thoughts. “That’s enough about that; let’s pop this thing into the viewer and see what we get.” He grabs the table-lamp contraption and places it between them. Lifting the time stone from its box, he sets it carefully into the glass chamber.

Nothing happens.

“I suppose this might need some repairs after rattling around in that box,” Mr. Brush says, frowning. “Hold the stone while I take a look. And mind, be careful. Only hold it by the smooth parts like I showed you.”

Mr. Brush pulls a miniscule screwdriver from his pocket and adjusts several components on the viewer. He yanks out and reattaches a threadlike wire, making an adjustment to the glass chamber. Satisfied, he sets the contraption back down.

“Let’s give it another try.”

Daniel sets the stone into the chamber; Mr. Brush lifts the candle and brings it close.

The candlelight bounces off of the stone and cascades onto the floor. Tiny shapes scatter everywhere, like bits of sunlight making their way through the leaves of a tree.

“Wait!” Mr. Brush says. He grabs the last volume, opens it to a blank page, and slides it underneath the viewer. “Now we can see better.”

Through the viewer, the stone projects markings like those found in the maps. Circles intersect with lines, and at the intersections strange symbols appear.

“See? That’s how it works,” Mr. Brush grins. “The Watchmaker’s job is to document changes in time and space as they are happening. It’s tricky to translate, mind you. You sure have to know what you are doing.”

Together Daniel and his uncle watch the lines and intersections move and fluctuate in beautiful patterns on the paper. Hundreds of shapes turn and shift together, forming a lacy pattern.

“Of course, there’s no way to keep up with all this anymore; there’s too much going on,” Mr. Brush says. “So many undocumented rifts, things jumping all over the place. What a mess.” He shakes his head.

“So,” Daniel says, “if I am understanding this right, it would appear that someone out there was documenting the insides of time and space rifts and then got interrupted and then somehow packed up their work and sent the whole thing to you in a big box? Why would they do that?”

“The answer to that, my boy, lies in determining who sent it,” Mr. Brush says. “Every Watchmaker has a personal seal. If we can just find it…” He digs around amongst the volumes, looking on the back pages of each. “Ah! Here we are.” He leans toward the candlelight to get a better look.

It’s a circular seal with symmetrical leaf designs in dark red ink, and the word “WATCHWORKS” curving over the top. The top part of the seal is intact but the lower portion is smeared, as if the seal was added in a hurry. There are several partial letters that might spell out a sort of name at the bottom.

Daniel attempts to read it. “Ee-gal-a-kev? There are far more consonants than vowels in this name.”

“Oh,” Mr. Brush says, nodding his head slowly. “I know who that is; let’s not bother with the pronunciation,” Mr. Brush says. “This fellow had a name nobody could ever say correctly. So we dispensed with it and just called him the Chairman. He is, after all, Chairman of the Council of Portals, last I knew.”

Lightning flashes in the front windows of the store. Two, three seconds, then thunder that sounds like it came from the roof.

Mr. Brush looks up and notices the disturbance outside for the first time. “I don’t like that,” he says. “Let’s get this stuff packed up.”

“What? It’s just weather,” Daniel says.’

“That’s not natural weather,” Mr. Brush says, suddenly jumpy. “Today’s sky was clear. I don’t like this at all.”

They place the viewer back in the box along with the leather volumes in order.

A gust of wind hits the front windows, causing them to rattle back and forth.

“Hurry,” Mr. Brush says. “Oh, we’ve messed about, haven’t we? This is exactly the sort of thing I try so hard to avoid. I mean, those Tromindox coming in here and making a mess, that was bad enough…but this? Oh dear…”

“What’s going on?” Daniel asks, picking up the last volume and the Index book containing the stone.

There’s another crash of thunder and the front door of the bookstore flies open.

“Damn!” Mr. Brush says. Daniel can’t remember having ever heard his uncle swear before.

Mr. Brush turns to Daniel. “I’m going to ask you to do something. Remember how I said never to hang out inside the portals? And how they are dangerous? And how to hold the stone correctly?” He’s grabbing Daniel’s wrists, holding out his hands with the stone and the book.

“Yeah,” Daniel says.

“Well, forget all of that,” Mr. Brush says, pushing Daniel toward the back of the store. “I need to stick you in somewhere out of the way for a minute. We’ve got to hide the stone. Without the stone the maps are useless. So just do what I ask. Okay?”

“Uh, okay,” Daniel says, walking backward, still holding the final map volume in one hand and the stone in the other.

Mr. Brush rummages in his pocket. Wind howls through the door now, upsetting books and sending Bertrand scurrying under a bookshelf. There’s hail hitting the front windows. Or is that hail? No, it’s something else.

“We have company,” Mr. Brush says. “Someone out there knows these maps were sent to us and wants to get a hold of them. I wonder what happened to the Chairman that would cause him to abandon his work like this. I don’t like it.”

Another crash of thunder. “Damn,” Mr. Brush says again. He pulls a portal coin from his pocket and presses it into Daniel’s palm, nearly causing Daniel to drop the map. “This portal is on a timer. You will go…somewhere…then you will come back. Don’t do anything. I just need you out of here for a little bit. Understand? If things work right, you’ll land right back in this spot.”

“But Uncle, I can help you! What is going on?”

“No time!” Mr. Brush shouts over the noise. Screeching, winged scorpion-like creatures pour through the door, filling the front of the store and crashing into the shelves. “Let me handle this. You keep that stone safe.” He grabs Daniel’s other hand and curls it around the stone, touching his fingers to several of the moving facets at the same time.

Daniel’s vision goes blurry. He can see his uncle turn to run back toward the front of the store, grabbing a broom and wielding it over his head. He sees Bertrand, or maybe that’s not Bertrand; it’s a cat-like shape morphing into something else—that’s all he can make out. Daniel tries to call to his uncle, but he can’t make any sound. And then he can’t see either.

Silence.

Daniel stands in a clearing, surrounded by woods. There’s grass and weeds up to his knees. A full moon glows and everything looks nighttime blue.

A hundred yards or so away he can see a hulking, four-story stone building, maybe an old hospital. It appears abandoned, its windows dark. A good setting for a horror movie, he notes to himself.

Moving closer, crunching through the dry weeds, Daniel notices a chain-link fence encircling the building. Even the fence is old, uneven and falling over in places. Overgrown hedges obscure most of the bottom floor. Whatever this place is, it hasn’t been in use in a long time, and stern signs posted on the fence warn that people are not supposed to go in there.

This place does not feel normal. Is it possible that Daniel’s uncle dropped him through a portal, or into a rift? If so, this is not what Daniel would have expected at all. Everything is so…quiet. There’s nothing going on. There’s an abandoned building and some weeds.

What did he think he would find? Flying saucers and cave men? Maybe.

A light flicks on in one of the windows on an upper floor of the building.

Daniel blinks to check if his eyes are working right. The window stands out bright yellow-white in the dark blue. He moves toward it, never taking his eyes off the light. The window looks to be on the second story, but this old building can’t possibly have electricity; it’s about to crumble at any moment.

There’s no denying it; someone is home.

Daniel squeezes between two separated sections of the chain-link fence and works his way into the overgrown bushes, keeping one eye on the yellow glow of the window. If he can just locate a foothold, he can hoist himself up and get a look in. Could it be there’s a different time going on inside, a time when the building was in use? Maybe this is how the rifts work?

Daniel grabs onto the stone facade and swings one foot up. The stone is thick and full of indentations, easy to climb, especially for someone who has spent so much time on the rocks in the wilderness around Brokeneck. Soon Daniel stands up against the wall just next to the lit window. He inches sideways, careful not to give himself away. There’s no telling what— or who—might be in there.

Peeking around with one eye, he sees nothing at first. But then he looks down toward the floor.

There’s a boy sitting there. Now he’s crawling around. He looks like he’s wearing pajamas. And he’s drawing with a marker pen all over the place.

Daniel can’t see the boy’s face, but it’s the drawings that catch his attention. They look exactly like the maps that he and his uncle just received. Circles, lines, intersections, symbols with squares and tiny markings in and around them. Notations everywhere. Is this kid a Watchmaker? Is it Mr. Brush at a young age? Is this some sort of flashback?

The boy stops drawing and sits up on his knees, seemingly taking a break. He wipes his nose with his sleeve and looks up.

It’s Henry Silverwood.

“Henry! Henry, it’s me, Daniel! From the bookstore!” Daniel yells, but his voice comes out weirdly muffled. He tries to bang with his palms on the window, but his hand stops just short of the glass, as if he is underwater and can’t quite move with enough force to hit anything. What is Henry doing in there? Is that really him, or an image? Maybe a vision from the future? Why would Henry hang out all alone in some abandoned building, drawing on the floor? Daniel’s head floods with questions. He tries again to call out and hit the window, but he can’t make contact.

Henry goes back to drawing, oblivious to Daniel’s presence.

Daniel feels his body being pulled away. “No!” he yells, but the building slides out from under him. The glowing window now looks like a lonely yellow square in a sea of midnight blue.

He stumbles backward and into a wall of books. Several volumes crash to the floor.

“What the— Uncle? Are you here? Am I back?” Daniel calls.

Then his eyes adjust and he looks around.

The store is a smoking, charred mess. Blackened books lie everywhere. The tables and counter lie smashed into splinters. The windows and door are shattered.

“Uncle?”

There’s movement in the rubble nearest the cash register. “Daniel?”

“Oh, my god,” Daniel says, wading over to the lump that he suspects is his uncle. He clears away a table leg and a pile of books to find Mr. Brush, lying on his back, grinning.

“Uncle?”

“I made them go away,” Mr. Brush says. “Bertrand helped. They didn’t get or Regrets. So there.” He puts up a finger in a weak gesture of victory.

Daniel helps his uncle sit up. “Are you okay? You’ve taken a hit on the head. There’s some blood.” There’s a lot of blood, actually, but Daniel doesn’t want to alarm Mr. Brush.

“I don’t feel so well,” Mr. Brush says. “Those little buggers have venom, you know.”

Buggers? Tromindox. Those were Tromindox. Since when are they little flying beasts? There’s no time to figure this out.

“Uncle, you’ve had some venom I think,” Daniel says. “Where is the syringe? Is it in the cash register?”

Mr. Brush’s eyes roll back in his head. “Uh, I don’t know…”

“Help me find it!” Daniel says, jumping up and rummaging around in the ruins of the counter. The drawer has come detached and hangs loose, and the contents have fallen out. Daniel digs in the pile on the floor below it. “Is it here? Stay with me!”

Daniel reaches down and feels a pencil, crumpled paper, and then a cylindrical object. There it is. He grabs it and clambers back over to the patient.

“Okay, I’m going to dose you with this,” Daniel says. “Do you know where I should poke you? Does it matter?”

“Aggghhhh,” Mr. Brush says. Is it the venom or the blood loss talking? Hard to say.

“Fine,” Daniel says, and lifts up his uncle’s forearm, jabbing in the needle and pushing the anti-venom into his bloodstream.

After an anxious minute Mr. Brush’s eyes clear and his face brightens slightly. “Wow, what a mess,” he says, looking around. “I made them clear off, though. Told them the stone was gone and the maps were useless. They weren’t satisfied so they did a little remodeling.”

“Where are the maps now?” Daniel asks.

“Oh, well, that was part of the remodeling,” Mr. Brush says. “Without the stone the maps weren’t interesting anymore, so they took care of them.” He gestures toward the spot on the floor where the wooden box had been.

The maps have been burnt to ash, along with the box. The viewer lies on top, bent and melted, its glass gone.

Bertrand sits on , though, right where it was. Apparently no one wanted it. The flames did no damage; it’s as if the book existed in a force field of its own. A cat-field.

Daniel pulls the volume and stone from his pockets and looks down at these two strange objects. This is all that’s left of the maps, now.

“Good job by us,” Mr. Brush says, smiling. “We kept the important bits.” He waves a hand weakly at Daniel’s possessions.

“Uncle, when I was…in there…I saw Henry Silverwood, Helen’s little brother,” Daniel says. “What does that mean?”

“You saw Henry in a rift?” Mr. Brush says.

So that was a rift, just as Daniel had suspected.

“Did you talk to him?”

“No, I couldn’t make contact,” Daniel says. “It was like I was there, but I wasn’t.”

Mr. Brush frowns. “What was the boy doing?”

“That’s the weird part. He was in this old house, and he was drawing maps. Just like these. Exactly like them.” Daniel holds out the book.

“Guild,” Mr. Brush says. “That boy is Guild. I don’t have the first idea why you would find Henry Silverwood in a rift, but you’d better tell Helen. You’ve got that little communicator thing she gave you, right? The one where your messages won’t be intercepted?”

“Yeah, I’ll be right back,” Daniel says. He bounds up the stairs to his room. Fortunately, the upper floor didn’t get torched.

Mr. Brush lays his head down and closes his eyes.

Christopher cuts a slice of apple and pops it in his mouth. He’s sitting in the open side door of the VW van across the street from a playground filled with screaming children. The playground serves as the brightly-colored centerpiece of an enormous planned housing development.

It’s just the two brothers in the van now, with all the stolen equipment from the Council. Anna and Kate departed on their motorcycles, a storm of black leather and chrome and dust. Off to cross the desert and find the Shard if possible.

Gabriel and Christopher have not come to this area to shop for a house in the suburbs; they are here because there is reason to believe there are Tromindox nearby. There have been several sightings reported; no humans missing (yet) in the immediate neighborhood. But it’s a great idea if you are a seven-foot-tall shape-shifter to hide out in a totally bland house on a nondescript street where no one ever rings the doorbell.

Gabriel, who has been on the swings while taking readings and checking in with other agents, hops off and crosses the street. A disgruntled ten-year-old quickly takes his place.

“I think I found us some squids to interrogate,” Gabriel says. “There might be a good candidate about ten miles from here.” Gabriel is of the opinion that some up-close-and personal conversations with Tromindox will yield leads on Henry’s location. Gabriel’s immunity to their venom puts the creatures on the defensive right away, giving Gabriel the intimidation factor he needs. And he wants answers, now.

“Hey Gabriel, something’s buzzing in here,” Christopher says. He leans back into the van and tugs on a couple of duffel bags. “It’s in Helen’s stuff.”

“Helen’s?” Gabriel grabs the bag and rummages around with urgency. By the time he digs the encrypted device out of the bag there are already several lines typed onto the screen:

hey its Daniel

are you there?

pls answer its important

Helen you there?

need to talk to you

Gabriel reads the message. “It’s that Daniel kid, the one from the bookstore in Brokeneck. He sounds agitated.”

“What does he want?” Christopher asks.

“Uh, don’t know,” Gabriel says. “Should I write back?”

“Sure,” Christopher says.

Gabriel types back:

hello

Daniel replies:

oh good you’re there

I saw Henry your brother

I was in a space-time rift

in this weird old building with a fence around it

by himself

possibly an illusion?

“He says he saw Henry,” Gabriel says to his brother. “How is that possible?”

“Seriously?” Christopher is now reading over Gabriel’s shoulder.

Gabriel types:

how do you know it was Henry?

Daniel:

I saw his face

it was weird I couldn’t reach him

he was drawing all over the floor

time maps

what does that mean?

Gabriel:

Daniel this is important

can you recreate the time-space where you saw Henry?

Daniel:

I don’t know

maps got destroyed

only one book and a time stone left

there was a fire

a guy called the Chairman sent the maps

“What?” Gabriel says. “The Chairman? Maps? What is going on? How are the Watchmakers involved in this? How is the Chairman involved in this?” Now Gabriel starts pacing. Christopher paces with him so he can keep reading.

Daniel keeps typing:

I thought maybe I was just seeing things

Helen I’m sorry about last time

I didn’t mean to be awkward

or make you feel weird

I’m really sorry

“Oh no,” Gabriel says. “I neglected to mention I’m not Helen and now he’s writing Helen-type things.” He holds up the screen for Christopher to see.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Christopher says. “Quick, tell him it’s you before he says anything truly embarrassing.”

“Really? If I don’t, maybe I can learn some things,” Gabriel says.

Christopher punches him in the arm. “No way! You’ve got to tell him. Quick! It’s a matter of honor, man.”

Gabriel considers. “Fine.” He really wants to keep this conversation going, though. Find out what this kid’s deal is.

Gabriel types:

Daniel this is Helen’s dad

Helen is missing

and so is Henry

we are trying to find them

can you recreate the rift?

There’s a long pause. Gabriel imagines Daniel slapping his forehead with his hand in humiliation, which is what Gabriel would be doing if the positions were reversed, and which is also pretty accurate.

Finally:

hi Mr. Silverwood

sorry i thought you were Helen

anyway I don’t know how to make the rift again

but maybe my uncle does

he got hit in the head but he’ll be ok

Gabriel types:

what you saw was real

we need a Watchmaker to pull Henry out

can your uncle do it

Daniel:

I don’t know

he got hit pretty hard

he’s asleep now

he needs rest

Christopher starts jumping up and down.

“What are you doing?” Gabriel asks.

“This!” Christopher says. “Don’t you see? It’s our chance to try out a convergence! This is what the Council were doing! We can try it! We have their data, and now we have the added advantage of the Chairman’s time stone and at least part of his maps! If we put this together correctly, we can get to Henry. And Helen. I just know it.”

Gabriel appreciates his brother’s enthusiasm. For a second it dampens the ache he’s carried ever since both of his children disappeared.

“Okay, what do I tell Daniel?” Gabriel asks.

“Tell him…tell him to hang tight for a minute; let me get something,” Christopher says. He’s on all fours now in the van, grabbing hard drives and plugging wires into them. “I’m going to send him some information. Just hang on.”

Henry’s room isn’t a room any more. It is an octagonal space the size of a swimming pool. He can make it any shape he wants. He can add doors and windows, and walk around on the walls and ceiling. He can draw a map of what he wants on the plaster or floor or a piece of paper, and watch the space change to match.

The only thing he can’t seem to do is leave.

Henry has tried adding more and more windows, but he still can’t open any of them. He has experimented with adding hallways that lead outside the room, but he is scared to go too far out there and always turns back. The digital people still come in without warning, bark orders at him, and take him to draw maps on the floor in another room. He doesn’t want to arouse their suspicions. So once he’s messed around for a while, he returns everything to its original state.

Renata pops open the little door in the wall. “You there?” she asks.

Henry sits on the floor and peeks at her. “Yeah.”

“Wow,” Renata says, peering around Henry’s new space. “You’ve been busy.”

“I wish I could draw a way out of here,” Henry says.

“I bet you do,” Renata says. “I promise you’ll figure it out. You will.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Henry says. “I better put this back before those creeps come to get me.” He gets up, walks over to the wall, and draws a nice rectangle with a single window and door. The room returns to its normal state, the bed in the middle and the desk in the corner.

“Hey, Renata?” Henry says.

“What?”

“Is this normal?”

“Is what normal?” Renata asks. “Nothing about this place is normal.”

“Is it normal for Guild kids to draw actual real space that changes around? And what about the maps that they’re making me draw—are those supposed to be something I know how to do? Is this Guild stuff? Or am I just losing my mind?”

“I don’t know,” Renata says. “I’ve never heard of any of it in my lessons or anything. I don’t know what normal Guild stuff is.”

Henry considers this. “Okay.”

“Hey, Renata?” Henry says.

“What?”

“Thank you.”

“For what?” Renata asks.

“For coming to talk to me,” Henry says. “I really need somebody to talk to. I’m definitely close to freaking out in here.”

“Yeah, me too,” Renata says. “I hope you figure out how to escape from this place soon. I know that if you keep trying, you will.”

The door slides shut and Henry is alone again.

“Me, too,” Henry says to the wall. “I hope I do, too.”

He tries to lie down and sleep, but he feels jumpy and agitated, and he can’t keep his legs still. He rolls over a few times. He can’t shake the feeling that he is being watched. He is used to being monitored, but this is more like—eyes on him. In the room. That crawly feeling on his neck. He keeps flipping and looking around, turning his head, but sees nothing more than the same drab walls.

Henry sits up. Something about the space seems different. Is it the color? He can’t quite figure it out.

He holds very still, listening, and then he realizes the difference. The room feels like it has a pulse. Like it is breathing. Alive.

Henry jumps out of bed. The wall slides away from him and stretches into a long passageway. What is this? Henry didn’t draw this. Did Renata do something? Did Henry make the room go crazy or fall apart by changing it around so much? Did he do something wrong?

Or has he just lost all perspective—quite literally?

“It’s not real,” Henry says to himself. “Not real. This is my imagination. Not real. That’s why it changes all the time.”

Henry keeps talking to himself as he takes a step, and then another, toward this strange new hallway. Maybe he did create a way out, after all. He walks faster, then breaks into a run.

The floor stretches in front of him endlessly, closed doors appearing on either side of him. He tries a few of the doors, but they all seem to be locked. He runs faster, but gets no closer to the end. And then, with no warning, the hallway veers to the right. Henry can’t turn quickly enough, so he slides into the wall and ricochets off of it with his shoulder. All the time he keeps his feet moving, keeps running. The wall twists and tips over now, and Henry finds himself running on it. He must not trip over the doorknobs that now stick out of the floor. He’s got to keep moving. If this is a way out, he can’t let it escape from him.

Another change in direction, another slam into the wall, he’s back on the floor again. Henry is breathing hard, now, and still the hall stretches on. What if he just goes in a big circle? He doesn’t care. He’s got to take this chance. He didn’t realize, until this passage presented itself, how desperate he had become to get out. This tiny bit of hope, a gap in his prison, has sent him into a near-panic.

Someone calls his name. “Henry?” Has someone finally found him? Broken into this place to get him out?

There it is again. “Henry?” There is no mistaking it, that is his sister’s voice.

“Helen! Where are you? I’m trying to get to you! Wait for me!” Henry shouts, using all of his breath. “You found me! I’m right here!”

Another sudden turn, this time Henry manages to keep from slamming into the wall. And then, there she is.

Helen is standing straight in front of him not fifty feet away.

“Henry! Don’t move! Stay there! I’m coming to get you!” Helen calls to him. She puts her hands out in front of her as if to signal him to stop.

But Henry doesn’t want to stop, he wants to reach his sister. He keeps running. He’s not going to miss this chance. There she is, right there. She is so close. If he can just get to her…

“Henry!”

The hallway twists to the side and Henry is again running along the wall. Like before, he takes care not to trip on the doorknobs.

This time, though, one of the doors is not latched and when Henry steps on it, it swings open, dropping him into total darkness. He feels nothing except space at first, but then he’s sliding along on his behind on a smooth surface, like a slide. His arms and legs flail as he goes. He can’t see Helen anymore. Was she really there? He believes in his heart of hearts that he saw his sister. He needs to believe it.

And now he’s lost her because of his own stupid mistake.

Henry tumbles downward, but his progress slows as if he’s got on an invisible parachute. He comes to a gentle landing on a stone floor. He rolls to a stop and squints as his eyes adjust. He can see what looks like computer screens, but in fancy frames on the wall like a museum. There are dozens of them. And are those shelves of books? He turns his head to take in this weird place. Somewhere there is classical music playing.

Is that a skeleton on the wall? Henry crawls backward to get away from it. How horrible! Who would put a skeleton…

“Hello, Henry Silverwood.”

It’s the Tromindox from Henry’s drawings. The elegant one, with the long face and the fancy clothes. Monder does not look at Henry right away. Instead he points his long fingers at the various screens on the wall. As he does, the pictures on the screens change. There’s a split-screen, with a padlock on the left and a door on the right. When Monder pokes at the padlock, it falls open. On the other side of the screen, the door simultaneously slams shut. On another screen, a faucet turns on and off while a cell phone lights up with a call from no one.

“Entanglements,” Monder says. “Rifts, created by your family’s portals. Tears in space-time. So many things over the decades have gotten twisted up together. Look how beautiful.” He points at an oval-shaped screen in an ornate gold frame. On one side, a driver clearly struggles to start a car, while on the other half a surveillance camera at a market shows the register popping open. “A beautiful mess. Still, an opportunity presents itself. These are only small, insignificant examples. There is much more to be done.”

Henry peeks at the other screens, dozens of them, all shapes and sizes. Many of them display time maps, like the ones Henry has been drawing. In fact, they are the ones Henry has been drawing. He recognizes his own handwriting. The screens refresh over and over, showing map after map after map. All of Henry’s work. So this is where it goes.

Monder finally turns around. “But where are my manners? Welcome, Henry. I’m glad you could come see me.”

“What did you do with my sister?” Henry shouts. “And why do you have all my drawings?”

“Well, that’s not very polite,” Monder says, picking up a teacup and saucer. “Don’t your parents teach you any manners? I suppose not, knowing who they are.” He takes a sip.

“What have you done with her?” Henry shouts. He jumps up and runs at Monder with all of his strength. “Where is she?” He raises both fists.

“Control yourself, child!” Monder roars. His head splits open and out spills a mass of tentacles tipped with blood-red eyeballs.

Long teeth sprout from nowhere, claws appear, robes turn to black and Monder the Tromindox rears up to his full seven-plus feet of height. The teacup and saucer shatter on the floor.

Henry falls backward, terrified. He flinches again and again as sharp claws flick at him, never quite making contact but coming close enough. The black tips glisten with venom.

Monder screams at Henry from a multitude of mouths. “Your purpose here is to do as you are told. Do not make me remind you again!”

His point made, Monder takes a moment to regain his former shape. His cheekbones and huge yellow eyes arrange themselves in the proper positions on his face. Tentacles and claws morph back into elegant robes sewn with gold thread. A long mane of black hair cascades once again down his back.

“Now,” Monder says. “Shall we continue? I brought you here and you will now listen or I will throw you into a hole and leave you there.”

Henry remains silent on the floor. He has gone from frantic and angry to subdued and fearful in a matter of moments. He stares straight forward and wraps his arms around his knees like he does back in his room.

“Better,” Monder says. “Now, these maps. A good start, to be sure. But, they are incomplete. The quality is…a bit lacking. You will need to do better.”

“What do you mean, better?” Henry says. “I don’t even know why I’m here! And you’re telling me to draw better?”

“Again with the attitude,” Monder says. “Guild. So important to get them while they are still children, before their minds close off. But I could do without the attitude.”

Monder is speaking in the direction of the screens, as if Henry isn’t even there.

Monder wheels around again. “Your sister. I need your assistance with her. She has something that I need. And she thinks that if she gives it to me, she will get you back. But there’s a little problem. Do you want to know what it is?”

Henry says nothing.

“Your sister is as poor a listener as you are. Like you, she is taking far too long to do what I have requested, and I fear that I shall have to go and retrieve her. But first I require completed maps of this rift, this labyrinth. Your work must accelerate. Understand?”

Henry nods.

“Good. Now, get to work, and do not stop until I say to. If I must speak to you again I shall not be so accommodating. Now, off with you.”

Monder snaps his long fingers in Henry’s face, and Henry can feel himself pulled backward. Everything around him blurs and in a split second he is back in a plain white room holding a marker pen in his hand.

“PLEASE. BEGIN AGAIN.” It’s the voice again.

“My sister is smarter than you,” Henry says. “She’s going to get me out of here.”

“PLEASE. BEGIN AGAIN.”

Henry puts the pen on the floor and begins to draw.

“Are you sure this is the place?” Kate asks Anna, climbing off of her motorcycle.

“Yeah, I recognize it from when I was a little kid. We used to come out here and barbecue,” Anna says.

The two women park their chrome-and-black bikes at the side of the long, dusty driveway and remove their helmets. A squat, silver trailer sits at the far end, flanked by two disorganized Jumping Cholla cactus plants.

The sky hangs low here, thick clouds reaching through the air from one enormous red rock to another. Anna and Kate rode for an hour down this dirt track, hoping they made the correct turn off of the two-lane highway. As soon as the late-afternoon sun bounced off of the trailer, creating a tiny flash in the desert, Anna knew it was the right place.

Wind chimes tinkle around in the hot breeze, greeting the women as they approach the front door. The trailer has rounded corners and a lack of wheels, having been installed here on a permanent basis long ago. There’s a bowl of water on a tiny iron table by the door, presumably for visiting birds.

“What are these little red things all over the ground?” Kate asks. She pokes at one with her toe. They look like tiny rocks, but they’re a bright unnatural color.

“Oh, he likes candy,” Anna replies, and smiles. “Don’t worry, he’ll share with you.”

Anna knocks on the screen door, which rattles around on loose hinges.

No answer.

Anna pulls open the screen and knocks on the real door, in hopes of making more noise.

They wait.

“Do you suppose he’s out?” Kate says.

“Out? Exactly where would that be? It’s not like he headed down the street to the easy mart,” Anna says.

Fair enough. They wait another minute.

“Maybe he really is out,” Anna says. “Let’s look around back.”

They circle the trailer, careful to take a wide path around the Jumping Cholla. The back has been fitted with a wooden trellis, off of which hang a variety of pots containing plants that mostly are not among the living. There’s a square of concrete, too, with a couple of lawn chairs and a spectacular collection of yard decorations including a burro carrying two planters on its back, a fawn, several squirrels and frogs and at least one gnome. This is where they find the trailer’s resident.

“Would y’all like some red hots?”

“Hello, Winston,” Anna says. “Nice to see you.”

Kate can’t pick Winston out from amongst the planters and yard art until he moves. Like the statues, he is gray and smallish. But when he turns around, his powder-blue eyes shine through round gold-rimmed glasses. He’s got a long white beard and ponytail; he walks with a stoop. He shuffles toward the women with one hand extended and the other holding a bowl of candy. He looks like if they don’t take his hand, he might tip forward.

“Good to see you,” Anna says, taking Winston’s hand and kissing him on the cheek. “Do you remember Kate? Kate Silverwood?”

“What?”

“Kate!” Anna says, raising her voice. Clearly Winston’s hearing is almost gone. “Kate Silverwood!”

“Ah! Yes,” Winston says, shuffling toward Kate and taking her hand. “Lovely to see you. Would you like some red hots?” He holds up the bowl.

“Sure, thanks,” Kate says, picking out a couple of the tiny candies.

“Take all you want,” Winston says, “I’ve got more.” With that he goes into a quiet, snuffly laugh. He shuffles over to a dilapidated wood table and sets down the bowl, spilling candies along the way. Kate now understands how the ground became littered with the tiny red objects.

“Winston, we’ve got a favor to ask,” Anna says.

“Julian called me,” Winston says. “On the secret phone wingy-dingy thing.” He snuffles again. “Come inside where we can talk.”

Winston waves them toward the back door, which hangs on for dear life by a single hinge. Inside it’s dark with small square windows providing the only illumination. The floor creaks, but everything is clean. Mementos sit in neat rows on wooden shelves. The kitchen is a time capsule from another era, with boomerang shapes decorating the counters and a mustard-yellow oven mounted in the wall. Next to that there’s a glass cabinet containing an endless collection of snow globes. Apparently, Winston has traveled the world many times over, gathering the little globes along the way.

“I suppose you don’t have time for a story,” Winston says, waving a hand at the snow globes.

“No, sorry, we don’t,” Anna says. “I wish we did.” Anna looks at Kate. “First thing used to always be, we’d pick a snow globe and Winston would tell us a story of his travels. Best part of visiting, in my opinion. Winston sure can tell a story.”

“Every word of ‘em true, too,” Winston grins.

“Sure, Winston,” Anna says, shooting him a look. “But this time I’m afraid we’re under some serious time pressure. Kate’s kids are both in Monder’s labyrinth.”

“So I heard,” Winston says, looking at Kate over the top of his glasses. “So I heard. Industrious kids you’ve got there. Maybe a little too much. They got the vision, those two. They can see things, can’t they?”

“Yes, they can, each in their own way,” Kate says.

“Well, isn’t that just how it is with kids,” Winston says, smiling.

“Isn’t it just,” Kate mumbles, swallowing back the knot in her throat.

“Let’s head inside,” Winston says, turning toward the living area.

Kate looks confused. Aren’t they already inside?

“Help me with this Miss Anna,” Winston says. The two of them roll up the rug at the center of the floor, revealing a trap door almost the size of the room itself. There are inlaid iron rings at the corners.

“Now Winston, you let me get this,” Anna says. “Kate? Can you lend a hand?”

The two women grab the iron handles and heave up the massive door. It must be a foot thick. When it reaches shoulder height, an unseen motor takes over and the door raises itself. Lights go on and a set of metal stairs unfurls below them.

“After you,” Winston says, gesturing to the women.

“Inside” turns out to be the size of a warehouse. It takes some minutes just to descend the mechanical stairway. Person-sized trunks and boxes line the walls, stacked to the ceiling. Many of these sport hand-lettered labels and a large number are secured with heavy padlocks.

“What is all this stuff?” Kate asks.

“Oh, a lot of it is outmoded weapons systems, obsolete time maps, things like that,” Winston says. I mean, a fair amount of it is junk, too—my old records, and a lot of weird experiments people have tried over the years. Maybe some of them I have tried.” He grins. “It’s like, nuclear waste. Volatile things, things nobody wants. Things you don’t want in the wrong hands. Like the Shard.”

Winston opens the middle drawer of an ancient-looking file cabinet. “Now, let’s see…”

“Winston, I already know the Shard’s filing number,” Anna says. “My dad told it to me before I came.”

“Oh, I’m sure he did, young lady,” Winston says, “but before we haul the thing out here we’ve got to deactivate its field. One false step doing that, and the emergency system could kick in and it would lock itself up for good. And, might I add, when we move it, everybody sees it move. Lots of eyeballs on this item, for sure. So let’s be sure to get it right, shall we. Ah! Here we are.”

Winston pulls out a crinkled sheet of paper. But before he begins reading, he peers at Anna and Kate over his glasses.

“Now we will go over what you are getting into with this piece of equipment.” Suddenly Winston’s voice is deeper, more resolute. “I’m not bringing the axe out here until things are fully understood.”

“Okay,” Anna says. “Whatever we have to do. But we don’t have a lot of time.”

Winston’s eyes sharpen and he shoots both women a piercing look. “You’ll have all the time in the world, if you don’t listen to what I’m going to tell you. Because you’ll be nowhere, on a permanent basis. As will your fine children. Doing this wrong is worse than doing nothing.”

He steps on a pedal near his foot and a chalkboard unfolds out of the floor.

“Now,” Winston says, approaching the board, “let’s go over the safety features of the Silver Shard.” He’s moving better now, as if he’s lost twenty years off of his age. He draws a cartoonish axe at the center of the board.

“The Shard is currently being held inside of a dampening field, where it has been for several decades. Removing it from the field will place it on the radar for any number of parties who would track it if they knew where it was. Among these: Tromindox, corrupt ex-Council members, and some others we haven’t been able to identify including a not-insignificant number of ‘toms, many of whom are probably under the direction of Monder himself.” He draws circles with arrows pointing in toward the axe.

“Once the Shard is out and its location is known, you must move it in accordance with portal protocols or risk inducing an uncontrolled collapse. The Shard may not, under any circumstances, be taken through a portal itself.” He draws a portal and then a slashing line through it. “The Shard’s location in relation to any space/time rifts will present an imminent danger. Since these rifts are all but impossible to detect, you will need to move the Shard along an approved safe path. Fortunately, I have one for you.” He hands Anna a tiny flash drive. “That’s encoded with the info. Load it up before you go too far or you’re in for some surprises.”

“As soon as you take possession of the Shard, you will leave here immediately, probably pursued by a host of unsavory individuals. You, Kate, will need all of your assassin skills at the ready to make it out of here alive. Got all that?”

“Yes, we do, Winston,” Anna says. “And Winston, Kate isn’t an assassin anymore. She’s been an agent for a long time. Ever since she and Gabriel had to escape with Helen.”

“Okay, that’s enough about me,” Kate says.

“Alrighty,” Winston says, eyeing Kate. He clearly knows far more about her background and her family than he has been letting on. “Fine, then. Stand back while I do my thing.”

Winston punches another foot pedal and a console rises out of the floor in front of him. He types in the Shard’s catalog number and a mechanical arm retrieves a box the size of a guitar case from a shelf far at the other end of the warehouse. Gears whirr as the object comes toward them. The arm then places the case on the floor.

Anna and Kate pull energy guns from their belts and power them up. The guns emit high whines, pulling electricity from the air—great for blowing apart the loose molecules of the shape-shifters; probably not so effective against ‘toms. Anna’s got a few tricks up her sleeve as well, but everything they do must be accomplished while moving. At a high rate of speed. In the right direction.

Before Winston uncloaks and unlocks the case, he turns to Anna and touches her cheek. “You’re a good person, Anna. You’ve done much for the clan. Your dad is, too. He has had to make hard choices.” Then he turns to Kate. “I know you have tried to do what’s right, Kate. Yours is a path of impossible decisions unique to yourself. Be well.”

He pops open the case, causing it to light up and set off a deafening alarm.

Winston lifts the Silver Shard from its longtime home and hands it to Kate. Kate takes it in both hands and looks it over. It really is made entirely of silver, heavy and solid, but it is far more intricate than Kate expected it to be. Its blade curves downward on one side and ends in a spike on the other. This is affixed to the handle with a cast silver tree whose roots wind and twist down into the handle. On closer inspection, it appears that this weapon might be a single intricately-forged piece of metal. Kate can see ghostly spiral patterns in the flat sides of the blade, remnants of melted portal coins. Whoever created this weapon was a craftsperson of the highest order, and capable of manipulating materials in ways long thought to be impossible.

The case has prevented the Shard from tarnishing; it shines bright. Kate wraps the axe blade in a black cloth, slings it around onto her back, and straps it there.

Winston pulls one more item from the Shard’s case. It’s a leather journal with a portal coin embedded in the cover. “Take this,” he says to Anna, pressing it into her hand. “Read it when you get to someplace safe.”

“But Winston—why?” Anna says.

“No time. Go, go, go!” Winston says, shooing them toward the stairs. “Remember, no portal travel. You follow the map I gave you.”

The women head for the top of the stairs and Winston rides the steps upward as metal hinges fold over on themselves. The mechanical door closes up with a loud clang!, deadbolts and other devices clicking into place underneath it. Some of these contain explosives, others are pressurized. All would have to be disarmed at the same instant for anyone to access the underground warehouse. Winston does not intend to open the door again.

Anna and Kate run to their bikes and fire them up. They swerve back onto the dirt track, making note of the size and position of the dust clouds rising in the distance. Just get to the main road, then increase speed and plot a course. As they jump rocks and drop into indentations in the terrain, a bit of the exposed axe handle flashes in the sun.

Winston pours himself a glass of water and slowly drinks it, standing in the kitchen window. He takes a deep breath and then goes to the front door and opens it, stepping out onto the tiny porch.

The sky has blackened in an instant. Winston can hear the low hum of an uncountable number of engines, growing louder. He stands perfectly still. Only his ponytail moves in the breeze.

There are a multitude of thuds like sonic booms. ‘Toms riding motorbikes or driving armored pickup trucks appear out of the air and crash onto the dirt, moving at full speed. Clouds of swarming Tromindox join them. Winston watches as they come at the tiny trailer, chewing up the terrain and sending rocks and dirt flying behind them.

Winston never kept pets because he knew this moment would come. He could not ask a faithful animal companion to make such a sacrifice. But he would have liked to have had a horse.

“You’re too late,” Winston says into the wind.

There will be no evidence left of the trailer, or of Winston, or of the spilled candy or the snow globes. There will be no bowl of water for the birds or wind chimes or Jumping Cholla. And there will be no record that he sent up a flare at the moment that Anna and Kate left, attracting attention away from them and giving them crucial minutes to get away.

Finally, there will be no evidence of the underground warehouse, cloaked and buried.

Helen saw her brother as clearly as she possibly could have seen him. He was right there in front of her, running toward her, calling to her. And then in an instant, he was gone.

Henry fell straight down into the ground, but Helen can’t figure out how. She examines the spot where he disappeared, but finds nothing. There is no sign that he was ever there. Not even an indentation or a footprint. Nothing.

Helen wonders if it was her fault. Was she too slow? How could she have messed up so badly? She was so close to pulling Henry back, but she didn’t react quickly enough. That might have been her only chance. The thoughts spin around in her head.

And then she thinks: If that really was Henry.

Helen no longer trusts anything she sees, and with good reason. Since the moment she came to the coordinates Monder gave her, the world has done nothing but change. She started out in some sort of dirt tunnel that grew and shrank as she moved, and after a few tries she got the hang of that. But then she found herself in a deep cavern where she could not see the beginning or the end, and now she is wandering in a barren landscape. It’s as if Helen’s world is disappearing a little bit at a time. Something about this place is very wrong.

Helen considers what that Mr. Goode person said when he rudely invited himself to visit Henry on the rooftop. Something about maps, and rifts, and how Guild kids like Henry could see them and write them down. Helen has no idea what a rift is, but she is beginning to wonder if perhaps Monder dropped her into one.

Is it possible that somehow Helen has entered into Monder’s prison, out of time? No, that couldn’t happen. Helen has heard her parents say over and over that Monder was banished to a unique place, inaccessible to anyone. You can’t just travel to a set of coordinates and—fall into it. If that were true, what would prevent Monder from marching out of the rift any time he chooses?

Or has Monder figured out how to do just that, and he brought Helen here to demonstrate?

Helen draws an “X” in the dirt with her foot at the spot where she thinks she last saw Henry. But she knows that this mark, like everything else, will soon disappear. Everything disappears, or transforms into something else. Underground, aboveground. Tunnels, caverns, landscape.

Helen can see a faint ring of mountains on the horizon, but she can’t make out how big or far away they are. She is starting to believe that it does not matter, because as soon as she tries to move toward them they will disappear or turn into a forest or a lake or perhaps another underground tunnel.

She sits down on the dirt next to her X, which is already beginning to fade. She takes a few deep breaths, and like that, the mountains are gone and the horizon simply ends. Perhaps this is the moon. Maybe the air will disappear next. Maybe Helen had better not think that way in case it really happens.

Super Logic Mode only works when there is something to think about, facts to sort and information to organize. This place offers a whole lot of nothing, along with one single glimpse of Henry. A glimpse that may or may not have been real. There’s just not enough here to come up with a plan.

“Well, self,” Helen says out loud, “this is a moment in life when it sure would be great to have an old wise person magically show up and share some kind of deep wisdom that helps me find Henry and get out of here. But based on how things look, that doesn’t seem likely. I guess it’s just me and me. I’ll have to serve as my own wise person. Just not so old.”

What Helen’s got is not much. There were those connections she saw in the tunnel walls, the ones that moved around with her, but she fears that was just her own thoughts, herself talking to herself. She can’t get her brother back by looking inside her own head.

Or can she?

Helen closes her eyes and touches the fragment around her neck. She’s got to pull herself together. What was it she saw before, in those dirt tunnels? The lines and connections mimicking her own movements? Can she find her way back to that place somehow, even with no walls to work with and nothing to pull apart?

Is there anything left here to hack into?

The fragment is one thing that has not changed. Helen takes this as a sign that she is at least managing not to move any closer to Monder. If she were moving closer, the fragment would look smoother and brighter, its spiral pattern more defined. And that has not happened.

Maybe Helen does have some information to work with, after all.

She takes a few deep breaths and tries to quiet her brain. She won’t be able to figure anything out with such a mess of thoughts flying around in her head. She narrows her mind down to one single idea: getting her brother back. She pictures Henry’s face.

Helen notices that Monder has been quiet. In fact, she hasn’t heard him say anything at all since she spotted Henry, and then he disappeared into the ground. What does that mean?

And then, as if on cue, she hears the deep Tromindox voice: “Ah! There you are.”

How did Monder find her? Why can she hear him?

“Where have you been?” Helen says, looking over both shoulders as if expecting to find Monder there.

“I could ask the same question of you,” the unseen Monder says. “But I’ll go first. I was visiting with your brother, to impress upon him, if you will, the gravity of his situation and the importance of him finishing his Guild work.”

“What have you done with him?” Helen says.

“Your little brother is safe,” Monder says. “You saw him; you know he is in one piece. Which is more than I can say for him if he doesn’t get busy. Now, let’s discuss you, Helen, shall we?”

Helen instinctively touches the fragment. She assumes Monder can tell that she hasn’t brought it any closer to him, due to the fact that the metal of his own half of the portal has not healed any further. But she doesn’t understand why he seemingly knows her whereabouts.

“Helen, you also have a job to do. And you know what that job is. Bring me the fragment, and do it now.”

Helen goes quiet, says nothing. Now why did Monder have the capability to snatch Henry like that, but not her? Why doesn’t Helen fall through a hole in the ground and have a ‘visit’ with the Tromindox? This doesn’t add up.

“You know what?” Helen says, “I don’t think you have any intention to let me have Henry. And I don’t think you plan to let me go, either. But my biggest question is, how come you can’t find me? How come you haven’t got the fragment yet? I mean, this is your home field, isn’t it? What’s wrong with you? Are you afraid of something? Why don’t you just come and get it?”

“Maybe I should do that,” Monder says. “That’s a very good idea. Because you know what? I don’t think you have any intention to let me have the fragment, either. You disappoint me, Helen.”

Dust rises from the horizon. Is it a storm? Helen can’t tell. There’s a deep, rumbling noise seemingly from all directions at once. Helen stands and looks around her into the distance.

The ground convulses under Helen’s feet, and she stumbles. The clouds loom much bigger now, almost filling the sky. Black. Dense.

Helen knows that shape. She saw it in the desert with her dad. What she sees up there is a massive Tromindox swarm. Soon she can hear the screeches of millions of tiny scorpion-like winged creatures, descending with their claws out.

The ground convulses again, and to her horror Helen sees it split apart. A chasm opens and the crack runs toward her feet at lightning speed. She braces herself. The only way to avoid falling and breaking all of her bones will be to keep to one side. She runs for it, but the crack follows her.

Follows her?

Now the swarm has reached Helen and claws and wings tangle in her hair. She puts up her arms to protect her eyes, leaving them vulnerable to hundreds of puncture wounds.

But Helen’s mind remains firmly on the crack in the ground—and its strange behavior. And this strange behavior reaches into the core of Helen’s mind and makes her angry.

Helen’s anger rises through her, burns up her spine, balls up in her fists. She stands up straight, oblivious now to the stings of tails and scraping of claws. She raises her arms up into the air with both hands out, and screams:

“You will STOP this!”

The crack stops short of her feet. The swarm retreats. The stings and punctures cease. It’s as if Helen has opened a force field around her body.

“Now, get away from me!” Helen screams again, and throws her arms out in front of her. The swarm convulses backward and the nearest of the creatures dissipate into puffs of dust.

The break in the ground reverses direction, beginning to close and move away from her.

Her arms fly in arcs in every direction, forcing the swarm to retreat into the distance. The ground heals and Helen stands on solid footing.

Now she screams like a madwoman and takes off running toward what is left of the swarm. She waves her arms over her head. Her black hair flies behind her. “All of you get away from me! Leave this place and never bother me again!” She punches the air, each blow sending the creatures farther into the distance until there is almost nothing left.

“From now on, this is my space. Do you hear me?” Helen yells, turning in circles. “Mine!”

The landscape falls silent. No more swarm; no fissure in the ground; no rumbling.

“Now if I have to, I will take this place apart piece by piece until I find my brother,” Helen shouts toward the sky.

Monder says nothing. Is he still there? Did he see what just happened? Helen no longer cares.

She sits down on the ground, closes her eyes, and begins the work of imagining a new landscape in which to find her brother and bring him back home.

Henry sits, knees under his chin, on his bed. Here he is, back in this blank room again. No matter what he does, or how fast or how far he runs, or how he changes the walls or the ceiling or the floor, he ends up right back here.

His hands ache from drawing, and he’s sick of sandwiches. He’s sick of everything.

The tiny rectangle in the wall opens and light shines through.

“I don’t really feel like talking, Renata,” Henry says without moving.

“Renata? Who’s Renata?” a voice says.

Henry jumps up. “Helen?” He falls to the floor on his stomach and peers through the hole. “Is that you?”

He sees a head of black hair hanging down, and then his sister’s face. The world through the little door looks like a desert of some sort instead of the usual room next door. It’s as if his sister has been installed in a miniature terrarium.

“What are you doing here?” Henry says. “Where is Renata? Did you see her?”

“I haven’t seen anybody, Henry,” Helen says. “There’s nobody here but me.”

“But where did Renata go?” Henry says.

“Henry, there is no one else here,” Helen says. “Look, we’ve got to work together to get out of this place. You see this?” She points to the opening. “This is a common space between you and me. If we concentrate, maybe we can hold onto it and make it bigger.”

“Common space? What does that mean? Where are you really? Is this a trick?” Henry says. “Where is Renata?”

“Henry, it’s just me!” Helen says. “And it’s not a trick. You and I are connected. I realized that when I saw you before. I was trying to get to you, you were trying to get out, and…Somehow we contacted each other for a second. And then Monder grabbed you away.”

“He says he’s gonna chew me up and throw me in a hole when he gets done with me,” Henry says. “ Helen, I keep trying to leave, but I can’t. I’m scared.”

“Listen,” Helen says. “I’ve got the fragment Monder wants.” She holds out the chain and dangles it to show him. It spins slowly. “I used it to get his attention so he would let me in here. Now I have to keep it away from him until we can get out of—whatever this place is.”

“You brought the fragment? Helen, you are crazy,” Henry says. “You have lost your mind.”

“Hey, it’s working so far, isn’t it?” Helen says. “I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”

“Sort of,” Henry says. “Through a dumb little hole.”

At that moment, for a split second and out of nowhere, everything changes as if someone flipped a TV channel and then immediately flipped it back. Henry’s room disappears. Henry is sitting on dirt. Helen is there in front of him, not ten feet away. There is nothing between them—no walls, nothing but air. And then it flips back and he’s in his room again.

“Helen? Did you see that?”

“See what?” Helen says.

“That! You were right there. There was nothing there. You were…”

“Henry, now you’re the one babbling like a crazy person,” Helen says.

“I’m not!” Henry says, slapping his hands on his thighs and bouncing. “Seriously, for like a millisecond. You were there. It’s like, there was a flash of the building not there. My room flashed away. It’s like what would happen if there were all these people in a hotel, in their rooms, and then the walls disappeared, and they were all,’ Hello, I didn’t know you were there.’ You didn’t see it?”

It happens again, the channel change. Henry’s room disappears, for a blink of an eye, and he sees Helen right in front of him. But again his room reappears. The channel flips, the channel flips back.

“Helen, you’re right there! You’re not far away!” Henry is shouting now.

“Okay, calm down,” Helen says. “Let’s think this through. Maybe we are in the same place, but what we see is different. You see your room and all that, and I see the desert for some reason. But we can talk, and sometimes we can see each other. Right?”

“Right!” Henry says. “So how do we get in the same place together? And how do we get out?”

“Another question to ask is, where is out, exactly?” Helen says. “And what are we in? If we’re in a rift, as I suspect we are, we’re outside of time. How do you escape from something where there’s no time?”

“Wherever this place is,” Henry says, “Monder’s here. Or he can see us and talk to us. So it has to be part of the rift. It has to!”

The channel flips again. This time, though, Helen sees it.

“That was you!” Helen says. “I saw you; you were right there!”

“See!?” Henry yells. “I said so!”

“Now how can we get it to stay that way?” Helen asks.

“Well,” Henry says, “when I figured out how to move the walls in my room around, it was super quiet. There was nothing going on and I was thinking about how bad I wanted out. And how I would blow this place up if I could. And then…stuff started morphing. And then, I saw writing. On the wall. It was telling me my room isn’t what it seems. Messages, stuff like that. Maybe if we concentrate super hard…”

“Maybe that’s the key,” Helen says. “Maybe we are creating what we see in some way. So if we concentrate instead on being in the same place…”

“Yes! Yes, you picture me, I picture you,” Henry says. “Ready? Oh, wait, hang on a second.”

Henry scrambles to his feet and runs to the tiny desk to grab as much paper as he can fit in the pocket of his pajama shirt. He stuffs pencils and pens in there, too. When he runs out of room he sticks some paper in his pants as well. Then he snatches one more pen and holds it in his fist.

“Okay,” Henry says, getting back down on the floor. “I’m ready now.” His pajamas crinkle with the paper.

“Deep breaths,” Helen says. The two of them stare straight ahead. Sure enough, the channel flips begin again, slowly at first and then faster and faster, Helen and Henry alternating between their own reality and each other’s. Helen moving toward her brother looks like a time-lapse movie, getting closer and closer, the scenery now snapping back and forth like alternating pages in a flip book.

And then, they join hands.

The flipping stops, and now they are in the desert together. Finally. In the same space.

Brother and sister grab each other and hug tight. “I am not letting go of you this time!” Helen says. Her chin fits right on top of his blond head.

“Okay,” Henry says quietly. “Okay.”

Henry pulls back. “But what about Renata?”

“Henry, I didn’t see anybody,” Helen says. “The only person I have seen in here is you.”

“But she was there! She was…” Henry’s face darkens. “I promised I wouldn’t leave without her.”

Helen takes Henry’s hand. “Henry, we can’t go back. Not now. Are you sure Renata was, you know, real?”

“I didn’t make her up!” Henry says, more frustrated than angry. “I promised…” He falls silent. Is Renata real? Is any of this real? Now he feels doubtful but guilty at the same time. He can’t abandon his friend, if she really is there. But is she?

“Um, Henry?” Helen says.

“Yeah?”

“We’ve got a more immediate problem. You brought a little something with you,” Helen says. “Look.”

Henry turns. Fifty or so figures in robes, all fitted with digital faces, stomp toward them like angry schoolteachers about to reprimand an unruly student. Their pixels display scowling, wrinkled expressions with heavy eyebrows and ugly teeth.

“Woa, woa!” Henry yells, jumping up. “Those things! I hate those things. They were the ones who made me draw. Helen…” he stumbles backward.

Helen stands up and faces the digital army. Then she throws her hands out in front of her.

“Leave us alone!” Helen shouts.

The figures blow back like paper dolls, robes flapping and tearing. Then they fall apart into fluttering pieces, like torn up paper. The pixel faces dissipate. And they are gone.

Henry looks at his sister. “That was cool.”

“Yeah,” Helen says and looks down at her hands. “It kind of was.”

“Kind of?” Henry says. “You blew them away! You have super powers here.”

“Maybe,” Helen says. “If I can figure out how to use them to stay one step ahead of Monder.” She holds up the half-coin on a chain. “This is the big prize, and I don’t know what to do with it. I used it to get Monder to give up where you were, but now that we’re together, how do we get out? How do we keep him from getting this one and then reuniting it with its other half? If he does that, the portal will open, and he’ll be free. And if this really is the rift, and we’re not in real space or time, how do we know where to go?”

“I can help with that,” Henry says, sticking his chin out. “I know how to draw maps. That’s all I’ve been allowed to do in here. They made me draw these maps on the floor. And then they took them away and made me make more. It sucked.”

“Monder has been making you map the rift?” Helen says.

“I think so,” Henry says. “I can see things—lines and circles and symbols. It’s like it’s already all there, inside my brain. They told me that if I don’t write it all down, they’ll shoot me full of venom. So, I wrote stuff down to get them to leave me alone. But I’ve also been studying the symbols, figuring out what they mean. “

“That means Monder already has his own maps of the labyrinth!” Helen says. “He might be able to find us at any time. It’s not your fault, Henry. He used you. He knew you had the Guild abilities. Someone told him.”

“Yeah, well, he won’t be able to use them very well,” Henry says.

Helen looks at her brother. “Why? Doesn’t he know how to read them?”

“Kind of,” Henry says. “I figured they wanted to use them to do bad, so I drew them all backwards,” Henry says, and grins.

“No way,” Helen says. “You are a genius. You are my genius brother.” She puts a palm in the air and Henry gives her a high five. “Seriously.” She shakes her head in amazement.

“So whatever way Monder or his creeps go should be exactly the wrong way,” Henry says. “Until they figure it out. Then I’m in for a butt-kicking by those stupid digital weird robed things.”

“Not if I can help it,” Helen says. “Do you think you could recreate the maps the right way around? Could we use them to look for a way out?”

“We can try it,” Henry says, pulling a piece of paper from his pocket. “I brought drawing supplies.”

Brother and sister sit down on the ground cross-legged facing each other, and Henry begins to draw.

“Okay, everybody ready?” Christopher asks. He’s sitting on the floor of the van holding a live wire in each hand.

The plan is to use a portal to find and open a time/space rift. They want to locate a relatively out-of-the-way rift, so as not to attract too much attention. Between the Chairman’s research on the hard drives and Daniel’s discovery with his uncle’s time maps, they might just have all the pieces they need to open one, navigate in, and get back out. This is what they will have to do to get Helen and Henry back. And to accomplish that, they must first learn how. Time for a dry run.

“Tell Daniel we’re ready,” Christopher says. “Send over the coordinates.”

Gabriel, squatting on the ground, types numbers into an improvised laptop computer with a jumble of wires running into the driver’s-side window.

“Okay, I sent them over,” Gabriel says. “How does this work, again?”

“Daniel says, first you have to locate a rift in three-dimensional space, and then at that junction you’ll find the two space-times in contact. It’s like a wormhole, I guess. Two things simultaneously changing in relation to each other. Or something like that.”

Gabriel will have to work with this sketchy explanation. With Mr. Brush out of commission, the brothers have to rely on Daniel’s limited knowledge and their own conjecture.

The van sits on a butte outside of a small Southwestern town. Reds and oranges smear across the sky. A single airplane leaves a trail of white heading north. Down in the valley, lighted signs glimmer in the dusk. GROCERIES. LIQUOR. GAS.

“Just to be clear,” Christopher says, “I dug these potential rift locations out of the old Chairman’s files, so I make no guarantee that they are still useful. It looks like something he tried. And according to the diagrams, this one rift appears less connected than the others. So I figured it’s kind of a boring one.”

“Good, we want a boring one,” Gabriel says. “We can make a few practice attempts before we get too fancy, figure this rift thing out, and then go get the kids. By the time Kate and Anna get back with the Shard, we should be ready for action.”

The device buzzes. It’s Daniel.

“Alright, he’s ready,” Gabriel says. “Give it a whirl.”

Christopher starts pounding the keyboard with his fingers. A few typos, a correction, and then it’s set to go.

“Scientific method,” Gabriel says. “What’s our hypothesis?”

“That we’ll locate this rift, travel to it, and pass an object through and back again,” Christopher says. He holds up a coffee mug, the intended object.

“Alternatives?” Gabriel asks.

“The rift is already closed for business, or obsolete, and nothing happens,” Christopher says.

“Other alternatives?”

“We blow up the universe.”

Gabriel rolls his eyes. “Other other alternatives.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s see. That we find the rift, but it doesn’t behave the way we expect.”

“In which case we will have to think fast,” Gabriel says. “Fine, we’re ready. Let the experiment commence.”

Christopher punches the coordinates and shoves a portal into the machine. Nothing happens.

“Try it again,” Gabriel says.

Christopher enters the numbers again, pops the portal out and back in again, and waits. Both brothers wait.

Nothing. No sound, no readings.

“This one’s a dud,” Christopher says. “Let’s try a different one.”

A device buzzes in Gabriel’s pocket. He fishes it out. “It’s Daniel.”

“Put him on voice,” Christopher says.

Gabriel flips a switch. “Hey, Daniel, we’ve got a lot of nothing over here. You see anything?”

Daniel’s voice crackles through the tiny speaker. “No, I don’t see anything either. Let me take a look outside.”

The brothers wait.

“Nope, nothing,” Daniel says. “Just, wait—hold on. There’s…”

The line goes dead. “Daniel?” Gabriel says. “You there?”

“Ah, now we need another channel,” Christopher says. “Let me call one up.” He lies backward, reaches up with one hand and adjusts an antenna on a box mounted to the inside wall of the van. Green characters scroll across a horizontal screen and he reads them upside down.

“Okay let’s try this one…Daniel? You there? We lost you.”

No response.

“We’re going backwards,” Gabriel says. “This might be the most boring experiment ever conducted.”

“Well, everything is information,” Christopher says. “So let’s see…I mean…ugh.”

Christopher clutches his head with both hands, but Gabriel is pacing back and forth and doesn’t notice right away. When he turns and sees his brother’s posture, he rushes over and crouches down next to him.

“Chris? You all right?”

“Ah man, it hurts,” Christopher says. He rocks forward and back, legs crossed, arms wrapped around his head.

“Okay, okay,” Gabriel says, jumping up and fumbling around in the back of the van. “We’ve got painkillers here somewhere…let me find some. What works best? Chris?” He tosses bottles and cans around.

Christopher just keeps rocking with his head down and eyes clamped shut. He sees stars, and then flashing lights. The lights swirl, changing color from orange to red to yellow. And then, they come together to form two larger lights. Eyes. Huge, yellow eyes.

Christopher’s eyes snap open. “No! No, no, no! That guy again. I’m seeing the eyes again. Why can’t they leave me alone…”

Gabriel hands Christopher a pair of painkillers and a water canteen, but fears that these may not have much effect. Christopher’s head contains remnants of Tromindox occupation, a rare condition since so few people survive an attack the way he did. Gabriel feels helpless in the face of cellular-level damage.

He puts his hand on Christopher’s shoulder.

Clarence, who has been asleep in the front passenger’s seat of the van, rouses himself and comes to Christopher’s side, shoving a wet nose into his ear in a gesture of sympathy.

Suddenly Christopher looks up. “He’s here, Gabriel.”

“Who?” Gabriel says.

“Monder. He’s here, somewhere,” Christopher says. “It’s not good. I can see him. Ah, man…” He wraps his arms around his head again and begins rocking again.

Gabriel has reached a point just short of panic. He paces back and forth, but Super Logic Mode isn’t going to make his brother’s head stop blowing up. “Hang in there,” he says. “Just hang in…”

That’s when he sees it.

“Uh, Chris?”

“Yeah,” Christopher says from inside of his arms.

“Maybe the experiment was slightly less boring than we thought. Look.”

On the other side of the van but still atop the butte, an imposing four-story stone building has appeared. It looks like a run-down hospital or maybe a school, massive and rectangular.

Christopher stands. His head is still pounding, but he squints through the pain. “Looks like we brought the rift to us instead of the other way around.”

“Looks like it,” Gabriel says. “You know what, I’ve seen that building before. I don’t know where. Where was it?” He sorts through memories. A place where he lived at some point?

Gabriel runs to the van and digs out a computer monitor. He pulls up a document on historic buildings and starts paging through it at high speed. He scrolls past picture after picture. No, not that one…not that one…

“There it is!” Gabriel says. “This is it.” He tries to run to Christopher to show him but the monitor is still wired to the van; the cord almost yanks him over backward. He hastily unplugs the cord from the computer. “Look!”

“That’s the ancient Silverwood clan seat,” Christopher says. “That doesn’t exist any-more.”

Gabriel’s eyes widen. Christopher is right, that’s exactly what it is. And this building, the one now in front of them, was destroyed a long time ago. He holds the monitor up next to it. It’s the same one.

It is also the location of the trial and conviction of Monder, the place where the Tromindox was banished out of time.

Daniel frantically punches the buttons on the side of his device, but it has gone dead. He can’t reach Gabriel or Christopher anymore. And he has a feeling that he really needs to talk to them. Now.

He’s standing in the ruins of a building of which only the outline of the foundation remains visible. He can see the shapes of rooms and the stone front steps still sit in their original position. The rest is overgrown with grass and weeds.

Brokeneck is nowhere to be seen.

Two pairs of wheels screech around curve after curve, black-and-chrome motorcycles leaning close to the ground to one side and then the other. The centerline of the road snakes under the tires. Anna and Kate shift their body weight to take the tightest turns they can without losing speed. Push down with the outside foot, move shoulders to the side, lean. Repeat. Anna’s red braid flies out underneath her beat-up copper helmet. Kate’s helmet is sleek black, smooth with a simple visor. Thick boots protect their lower legs.

Anna keeps a close eye on the display mounted between her handlebars. There’s a pair of dots at the center, which represent herself and Kate on their bikes, and then red lines running down the left and right sides. As long as they keep their bikes between the red lines, the route remains safe from wayward time breaks or other disturbances that would be disastrous if brought in contact with the concentrated energy of the Shard strapped to Kate’s back.

The terrain consists of a vast, bleak expanse of weedy fields rimmed with beat-up barbed-wire fences. The horizon is rimmed by rolling hills dotted with collections of trees. Not much to look at, but Anna and Kate can’t see much anyway. The scenery is a blur at this speed.

All seems well on the road, until suddenly the display shifts and indicates that they must veer to the right in order to remain on a safe course. Anna slows and pulls to the side of the road to be sure. Kate pulls up next to her.

“Again?” Kate says into the intercom in her helmet.

“Yeah,” Anna replies. “Looks like we’re going off this direction. We’ll need to cut the fence.”

Kate hops off her bike and takes a pair of pliers to the barbed wire, leaving a gap large enough for the bikes. There are no cows or other livestock anywhere in the visible area that would escape by way of this fence anyway.

The two bikers roll through the fence and continue on over rough dirt and rocks for some distance. The off-road portions of their trip pose a unique danger due to the plume of dust that rises behind them, increasing their visibility by a factor of ten. They must not waste too much time on this type of ground.

Soon they can see a collection of buildings in the distance. As they draw closer lights and signs atop posts appear. Looks like a wide spot in the road–the road they are not on, because Winston insists that they travel across this dirt instead. It’s dusk; neon signs flash bright against the dim backdrop of the hills.

There’s no time to stop for a visit. Anna and Kate must cover as much distance as they can.

When they reach the edge of the town, Anna slows. “There are quite a few disturbances around here,” she says. “We might have to get creative.” The lines on her display are flitting back and forth, indicating a convoluted path forward.

“Fine,” Kate says.

They pass through the town without any major problems, other than having to detour behind several buildings and maneuver between trash bins. As they leave, though, their route steers them straight through a barn from one end to the other. Inside, horses’ heads turn to follow them as they go by. They leave behind a cloud of straw bits.

The women must move quickly because of both what lies ahead and what lies behind. They have no time to lose bringing the Shard back, since it represents their best chance to close up Monder’s rift for good and to get Helen and Henry back. And behind them, well, it would seem that there is one of just about every creature and contraption in pursuit. Just as Winston warned, there are many parties interested in getting hands–or tentacles–on the Shard.

Kate and Anna have managed to open up some distance between themselves and most of the ‘toms currently following them. Anna put a dampening field in place, but they have nothing strong enough to obscure the Shard’s presence completely. Any properly motivated creature or machine out there can track them with the right equipment.

Eventually the road straightens out, so Anna and Kate can both increase their speed and prepare their equipment and weapons systems for the next onslaught. Anna flips open a panel beneath her screen and tweaks the dampening field. It may not hide them completely, but it gives them a precious few extra seconds to react.

“More ‘toms, out back,” Kate says into her helmet intercom. The motorcycles’ engines mask the low buzz of the cyborgs, but an unmistakable cloud fills her rear-view monitor.

“Got ‘em,” Anna says. “Locking on now. Keep a steady speed.”

Anna waits until the ‘toms pull within about fifty feet, flying in pursuit above the roadway. She charges up her weapon—a combination explosive and hacking device. What it doesn’t blow apart it will embed with fatal code, a volley of signals sent to scramble the brains of any ‘toms within a reasonable distance – disabling their navigation and sending them crashing to the ground. For good measure, the code also commands the ‘toms to erase their own memories.

“Here we go!” Anna says. She flips the weapon backwards and rests its barrel on her shoulder, checking the digital scope on her dashboard to ensure accuracy. She squeezes the trigger with her thumb. An array of programmed darts blast out and swoop toward the ‘toms like attacking birds.

Kate, riding alongside, checks to be sure that her ammunition is fully charged. Her weapon is smaller and easier to maneuver so she can pick off any ‘toms that Anna misses. Kate must also fire backward in order to keep her eyes on the road.

Anna’s missiles detonate and bits of ‘toms fly off in all directions. A few chunks of metal are propelled forward at high speed, bouncing off of the pavement and forcing the two bikes to swerve. Kate powers up and raises her weapon.

Three of the larger ‘toms remain undeterred, pursuing Kate and Anna like car-sized insects. The ‘toms come in a variety of shapes, each of them built by blending ex-Tromindox prey with mechanical components and sophisticated programming. One ‘tom trails behind it a long, snakelike tail made up of pieced-together vertebrae and bike chains. The others look to be based on human frames and have had hydraulic and jet components added to their backs and legs. Each ‘tom presents a unique target shape and pattern of movement.

Kate calibrates her weapon by first capturing the shape of each ‘tom in her viewer. One, two, then three – the third one evades her first try, but then she catches it and the scope lights up with a hit. Next Kate sets up for three shots one after the other. She squeezes the trigger and fires, programmed missiles whistling out behind her and searching for their targets. One after the other the ‘toms blow apart; first the snake, then the two humanoids. Kate has carefully calibrated to use a minimum amount of power; she can’t afford to drain her batteries.

Anna straightens in her seat, the air behind them clear for the moment. “We can’t keep this up forever,” she says into her intercom. “I wish we could just jump a portal and get this over with.”

“You’re right; this is taking too long,” Kate says. “And as the Shard gets closer to the fragments, it’s going to send out more and more noise. Pretty soon our trip is going to degenerate into one giant battle. What if we can’t get there before the rift breaks open? What if Helen doesn’t even have the fragment anymore?”

“There’s no way to be sure,” Anna says, “but I imagine if Monder got hold of the fragment we would know about it pretty quick. Once he gets his hands on that, you can bet that the first thing he’s going to do is come looking for Kate Silverwood. And that hasn’t happened. Yet.”

Kate says nothing. She knows that what Anna says is true. Monder blames Kate for his imprisonment. He holds her responsible for the murder of Anna’s mother; or rather, the creature that used to be Anna’s mother, hideously disfigured and absorbed by the Tromindox thought to be Monder’s lifelong partner and mate. Kate remembers the moment Monder was banished, when the Council, in a rare show of solidarity, pooled their resources and threw the Tromindox into a little-understood time rift controlled by a broken portal. On that day, Monder vowed he would take revenge not only on Kate, but on the entire Silverwood clan. That he would find a way to exterminate them the way humans had nearly exterminated the Tromindox.

Even back then, as Kate turned and walked away from the site of Monder’s banishment, his voice still rang in her ears and she knew she would always have to take his threats seriously…no matter where – or when – Monder might be. She can still hear his words clearly now, in her head.

“There’s got to be a way to accelerate our progress,” Anna says. “These attacks are slowing us down too much. Every five minutes there’s another batch of ‘toms. And we don’t even know where they are all coming from.”

“Here’s a question,” Kate says, “why do all of these creatures want this axe so bad? I know it’s famous, and it’s been hidden for a long time, but is that a reason for every metal-and-flesh contraption far and wide to come running after us? This isn’t just collectors or bounty hunters. This is someone with an agenda. Someone with a use for it.”

“Or,” Anna says, “someone who knows that we have a use for it. We are pretty sure that Monder’s got influence outside the rift now. He knows the Shard has the reputation for being the only thing that can destroy the fragments and close the portal for good. Or that’s what he believes. So maybe this chase is meant to keep us busy.”

“Well, they’re doing a terrific job,” Kate says. “We’re gonna run low on power pretty soon. We’ve got to find somewhere to hide for a minute and recharge. And then we’ll lose even more time…”

“Let’s find someplace underground,” Anna says. “That way we can lay low, for real. And then we can try to call up the boys. Who knows what experiments they’ve conducted using the time maps Daniel discovered. I shudder to think.”

“Okay,” Kate says. “Suppose we can get underneath solid rock, how much time would that buy us? Can we at least avoid detection by airborne sensors for awhile?”

“I would guess a little while—maybe an hour,” Anna says.

“That’s enough,” Kate says. “Let’s try it. I’ll find us a masked communications channel on the way and see if we can get through to Chris and Gabriel.”

The two motorcycles accelerate across a wide valley between two enormous rock formations. It’s growing dark. The road stretches all the way to the other side. A line moves up and down the screen on Kate’s dashboard, searching and searching for channels that will let her talk to her husband away from the prying ears of seemingly every ‘tom in the world.

A huge rock formation shaped like a melting mushroom looms on their left, not too far away from the road. They pull over so Kate can scan it through binoculars. The rock looks to be about the width of a football field with one side eroded away by the wind. The erosion creates a kind of cave that may be just big enough for two women and their bikes.

“That outcropping should be sufficient,” Kate says. “Let’s get under there and then we can try to call the boys.”

Anna checks her heads-up display. “That’s outside the route Winston gave us,” she says. “Only by a few hundred yards, but still it’s a deviation from the path.”

“Another thing to slow us down,” Kate says. “I know Winston warned us we can’t bring the Shard in contact with any open portals or rifts. So we’ll have to pay attention, choose our route carefully. But we’ve seen nothing out here, so far, except clouds of ‘toms. And we’ve got no idea what Christopher and Gabriel are doing. Radio silence is great when you need to lay low, but we can’t just fly in there blind. If this situation is anything like what we dealt with when Monder was first banished, we will have to think fast. And that means, we’ve got to know what we are facing before we get there. “

“Spoken like a true agent,” Anna says. “I’ll put more power into creating a concentrated dampening field up against the rock. It might not last too long, but it will give us a little window of peace and quiet.”

“You know,” Kate says, “it’s possible those guys are parked in the desert somewhere building a fort and playing bass and Helen and Henry are free and everyone is singing camping songs.”

A girl can hope.

The two motorcycles drop off of the main road and head toward the mushroom-shaped rock, trailing dust. Soon they will have hidden their location completely, if only for a short time. Meanwhile, ‘toms and Tromindox huddle in groups and clumps throughout the valley, watching and waiting for the Shard’s position to reappear on their scopes.

A four-way intersection in a frontier town. Horseless carriages maneuver around one another, intermingling with pedestrians and horses with their riders. It is hot out, and everyone is in a hurry to finish their business and retreat to the shade.

An interstate highway. At the side of the road sits a historic marker. A tractor-trailer hauling two containers rolls along at a steady speed. Its driver listens to country music and chews on what’s left of a box of mini-doughnuts purchased at the last truck stop.

A carriage crash. Frightened horses and vehicles careen in every direction, people scatter and scream. How did this happen? Who ran into whom and started the chain reaction? No one knows. It’s as if a sudden storm of chaos dropped down from the sky. Carriages now lie on their sides, wheels spinning. Worried riders check their horses. The center of the street, though, remains empty. The accident has somehow cleared a wide area right through the middle of the intersection with nothing there at all but a set of wheel ruts far too wide to have been made by carriage wheels.

The truck takes an impact from the right side, knocking the tractor onto its two left wheels. The driver throws his full weight into the steering wheel, desperate to regain control. Mini-doughnuts fly all around the cab. Rubber skids and the trailers nearly jack-knife, but the driver manages to right his rig. With all wheels back safely on the ground, the driver now pulls over to collect himself. This is an empty road; there is nothing he can see anywhere that he might have hit. He sets the parking brake and leaves the engine idling, climbing down from the cab to take a look. He can smell the rubber burned onto the pavement and feel the heat from the brakes.

But the driver sees nothing except a wide area just off the road in the dirt, that appears marked with narrow wheel ruts, skid marks, and indentations shaped like horseshoes.

Daniel feels it in his gut: He is sure he has been in this place before. Why can’t he remember? The Brokeneck Hotel across the street from his uncle’s bookstore lies in ruins, but this place is different. And Daniel can clearly see that he is no longer in Brokeneck. He’s on some hilltop in a desert somewhere. The sky is a mixture of tangerine and blue with smears of white clouds. Dirt and clumps of sparse grass stretch into the distance on all sides. Occasional dust devils stir up and then die out. The only sound Daniel hears is the wind whistling past his ears.

And no matter how much he pushes the buttons on this stupid device, he can no longer communicate with Gabriel or Christopher. The signal is totally dead. This little experiment with a supposedly out-of-the-way rift was either a success, or a horrible failure. Daniel realizes that he does not know which.

He looks over what appears to be the former front steps of the structure, a stone zigzag now leading nowhere. He walks up and down them a few times; perhaps he can trigger some memory. Any memory. It doesn’t seem to work. He peers down at the stone; no inscriptions or stamps anywhere either. What is this place? Why does it feel so familiar?

Daniel pretends to walk through the front door. The shape of the foundation suggests there was a spacious front room, perhaps a lobby or grand entrance. There is the stub of a staircase, and bare gaps in the stone give away the spots where doors would have been.

Daniel walks through the outlines of the rooms like a giant in a maze. There are crumbled fireplaces and a few pieces of floor left, sections of worn wood and cracked tile. The walls themselves, though, are only memories.

None of this walking around is helping Daniel to remember. Instead, he is beginning to feel very, very alone. Daniel is generally okay with being by himself; he has spent many hours by himself in the Brokeneck Bookstore, absorbing book after book and marinating in his own thoughts. He has gone exploring in the woods outside of town many times, carrying nothing but a flashlight and a sandwich. But this is different. Instead of a living, breathing world, this place feels dead.

At the center of the ruins a wide, flat area of floor remains pretty much intact. It is constructed of gray stone cut into pieces that fit together like a large-scale puzzle. It seems strangely out of place; not like something normally found on the inside of a house. Daniel steps up onto the puzzle and traces the shapes on the floor with his feet. The lines take him around and around in a circle, drawing ever closer to the center. He feels like a mystic, there in his sandals and dreadlocks, walking in circles. Where has he seen this before?

Daniel recognizes the pattern; these stones form a labyrinth, a series of back-and-forth paths culminating in a round flat stone at the center. He has read about these in many of his uncle’s books. He steps to the center to get a better look at the circular stone; it is well-worn, but appears to have been carved with winding lines that resemble roots of a tree.

From his vantage point at the center of the labyrinth Daniel takes a slow turn around, surveying the expanse of ruins. This is a big place, and ancient. Was it destroyed, or did it fall apart over millennia? And when in his life has he ever been to a big ancient building with a labyrinth built into the floor? Why does it feel familiar, and why can’t he place it?

“Daniel?”

Daniel spins around. Who was that? The voice sounded like it came from right next to him.

“Daniel! I’m right here!”

It’s Helen’s voice. Maybe he isn’t alone after all.

“Can you see me?”

“No, I can’t,” Daniel says, spinning around. “Where are you?”

Nothing. Is he hearing things? Perhaps his mind is creating company for him.

Something flashes at the corner of his eye and he turns, but now it’s gone again. What was that?

“Daniel!”

Okay, this place is haunted. This is a haunted ruin.

Another flash. This time Daniel does catch the tiniest glimpse. It’s Helen; he recognizes the long black hair right away. But she’s not all there; she’s a hologram, or maybe a low-resolution movie.

“Helen? Is that you? What is going on? Where are you?” He steps out of the circle, hoping to catch sight of her again. Silence.

Daniel jumps. There’s a giant bug in his shirt pocket, crawling around. He reaches in, grabs the creature and tosses it out on the ground.

But it’s not a bug, it’s the time stone. The stone lands with a clunk on the stone circle and begins to jump around like an insect that’s been flipped on its back. Its facets seem to be moving all at once.

“Woa, little guy,” Daniel says. “What’s got you all freaked out?” He crouches down and picks up the stone, which isn’t easy; it takes several tries before he can get hold of it. He cups it in both hands so as not to drop it and steps out of the circle again. The stone seems to slow down a little, but it’s still moving.

Daniel has an idea. He holds the stone out toward the center circle again. Sure enough, the stone starts popping and Daniel nearly drops it. He pulls it back toward him, and the stone calms down.

Keeping a firm hold on the stone now, Daniel steps back into the circle. “Helen?”

The stone responds, but Helen does not. He waits. Nothing happens.

And then it hits him. The stone in his hand, the big structure…he runs back out the front steps and turns around to take a fresh look at the area that would have at one time been the front facade of the building.

“That’s what this is, isn’t it? You’re trying to tell me,” Daniel says to the stone. And then: “Why am I talking to a rock—again?”

Daniel backs up one step, and another. He looks up and to the right. He traces a rectangle in the air with a finger, a pretend window on the second floor. Finally it hits him: This is the ruins of the building where he climbed up and saw Henry sitting on the floor, drawing. He’s sure of it. Same size, same gray bricks. This is the exact same place.

But now it’s in ruins. What happened to it? What happened to Henry?

“I’m in the rift again, aren’t I?” Daniel says to the stone. “I’m in the same place, but this is a different time. A different time! That’s it! I’ve hit a different layer of time. A time when this building isn’t here anymore.” The stone just pulses.

Daniel pulls the map book out of his back pocket and looks at it with new eyes. The circles and intersections, those are not just two-dimensional, flat maps; they represent overlapping spirals that sit atop one another like a stacked-up blueprint. They depict the same space but at different times, and where portals and rifts between these times overlap and connect to one another. The overall effect is something not unlike…a labyrinth.

At first, Daniel is excited at this insight. But then he considers that if he has, in fact, traveled to some other time, and if he can’t get a hold of the people who sent him here, it’s possible that he may have accidentally split off into the future by himself. And possibly by thousands of years. This would explain why he feels so extremely alone.

Or is he? Daniel walks back toward that center stone in the labyrinth, determined to find a way to see Helen again.

“That was Daniel!” Helen shouts. “I saw him! Why would we see Daniel?”

“You mean why would you see Daniel,” Henry corrects his sister. “I didn’t see anybody. What was he doing?”

Helen and Henry are in a nondescript landscape made of dirt and rocks and ringed by the vague shape of rolling hills far in the distance. It’s like a huge, empty crater with the two of them at the center of it.

“Well,” Helen says, “he wasn’t doing anything, really. Just standing there, looking confused. I tried to get his attention. It seemed like he could tell I was there, but he couldn’t see me. Now he’s gone again.” She walks back and forth as if to re-enact the incident. “He was right here, somewhere…”

“Weird,” Henry says. He’s sitting cross-legged on the ground with bits of paper covered in maps all around him. On top of each sheet he has placed a rock to keep the drawings from blowing away.

“Wait! There he is again! Daniel!” Helen starts waving her arms. All Henry can see is a crazy girl in the middle of a desert yelling at nobody.

“Nope, he can’t hear me,” Helen says. Then she adds, “His dreadlocks are really long.”

“Maybe you’re just thinking about him and that’s how come you see him,” Henry says. “You know, like the way you and I did before, the way we linked with each other. Only now with Daniel. I guess you think about Daniel, don’t you?” Henry grins.

“Shut up, Henry,” Helen says. “I saw him. But how? He’s in Brokeneck. I sent him a message, to warn him about the swarming Tromindox. That’s the last time we talked.”

Henry frowns at his drawings. Something about them doesn’t make sense. It’s bothered him ever since he got pulled into the big white room and was made to draw on the floor with a pen. The maps are filled with symbols that repeat and always seem to show up in the same relation to each other. But sometimes the lines and the circles don’t meet up. There are gaps. Backwards or the right way around, it doesn’t look complete. Why is that? Why can’t Henry make sense of it? What is missing? He can’t shake the feeling that there’s a clue in there somewhere. If he can just find it.

At first, Henry thought that perhaps his drawings looked strange because he didn’t really know what he was doing. After all, he had been drawing from a compulsion that he didn’t understand. Maybe he had left off parts of the maps, lost in some deep area of his brain. But he couldn’t get around the fact that the omissions felt purposeful. Like they were meant to be there from the beginning. This was driving Henry nuts. Why would a person draw a map and then purposely leave holes in it?

A gust of wind hits the papers and a few of them come loose from beneath their rocks, skittering across the ground. “Oh no!” Henry yells, and jumps up to chase them. He is not going to lose all this work.

Henry manages to retrieve most of the drawings right away, but a couple of them elude him. He runs along, doubled over with hands out, loose papers flipping along just in front of his toes. Finally, he grabs hold of one and then stomps his foot down on the other.

“Got ‘em!” Henry says. He bends down, grabs the drawings in his hands, and stacks the two sheets of paper on top of each other.

That’s when he sees it.

“Wait…” Henry mutters to himself. He stuffs the rest of the drawings in his shirt pocket so he can take a better look at just these two. He holds them up to the light and lines up the edges of the paper. The sun shines through them, revealing the two maps combined. Sure enough, where one line ends another begins, and where there were gaps before, now there is a completed shape. A map without holes in it.

“Helen, check this out!” he yells, running back toward his sister. “Look at this! Look what happens when I match these two pieces up.”

“Um, what?” Helen says, trying to follow. She’s still pacing around trying to figure out exactly where she was when she saw Daniel.

“See?” Henry holds up the drawings in front of Helen’s face. “The pictures I was drawing all looked like they had stuff missing—but look!” He lines up the paper edges and points to a spot where a circle has a chunk out of it, like an incomplete pie chart or a radar signal that doesn’t go all the way around. “If you put these together, they fit. That’s how you put them in order. That’s how it works, I’m sure it is! I mean, I knew, I knew there was something wrong with them, like they weren’t right, but this…No way!” Henry is jumping up and down and Helen has to grab the papers out of his hand in order to hold them still and see what he is talking about.

Helen slides the drawings together between her thumb and forefinger, lining up the edges as Henry had done. Sure enough, the drawings fit together exactly. The straight lines running through the circles also match, like little bridges from one drawing to the next. “These look like layers of a cake,” Helen says, “or floors of a building.”

“Layers!” Henry yells. “The maps are all full of layers, like a three-dimensional space! That’s it—they stack up.” His hair flies over his face as he jumps and he’s creating his own personal dust devil.

“We have to try it with the rest of them!” Henry yells, pulling out papers from his pockets and pants and from underneath pebbles. The sheets are small, and Henry shuffles them around like a big deck of cards. He puts one on top of another, holds it up, adds a third, and so on. He keeps shuffling the sheets around, changing their order and trying to find how they combine.

“See, then when we read it page by page…” Henry says, carefully turning through the crinkled drawings one by one. “See? You go here, and then there’s a gap, and then the line goes here, and so on all the way through. That’s cool! At least I think it’s cool…”

“So, Henry, you just know how to draw these maps for some reason? Your teacher Rose never showed you how or anything?” Helen asks.

“Yeah, I guess,” Henry answers. “It’s like I remember them from somewhere. Like, a dream. Rose never mentioned them.”

“You have odd dreams,” Helen says. “But now that you’ve figured this out, let’s take a look at the whole bunch of them together.”

The two of them sit down on the ground and pick through the maps again, more slowly this time. They find that if they flip the sheets like a flipbook, the connections from the maps reveal themselves more clearly. A horizontal line partway across one drawing continues on the next. Gaps in the circles line up. Helen and Henry order and re-order the pages until they seem to be at least close to the proper sequence.

Flipping the pages also shows them that in all the drawings, there is one thing that does not change. The same symbol appears over and over again, in the same position. A square, with a circle inside and then a strange squiggly line inside that.

“What is this thing here? That’s got to be pretty important; it shows up over and over,” Helen says, putting a finger down on the square symbol.

“Yeah, I wonder what it means,” Henry says.

Helen looks at her brother. “This is the weirdest thing,” she says. “Here you’ve got all this stuff in your head, super-complicated diagrams, circles, little symbols, and you dump it all over this paper, and then you don’t know what half of it is supposed to say.”

“Yeah,” Henry says simply. “I know. Sorry.” His shoulders drop.

“It’s not your fault,” Helen says. “I mean, the fact that you can draw any of this stuff is pretty amazing. It’s just peculiar.”

“I know,” Henry says. “I just wish I could read it better. I also wish I could go back to drawing superheroes.”

“The overlapping layer cake thing is a big breakthrough,” Helen says, trying to reassure her brother. “Now let’s figure out why this one mark never changes. Maybe that’s the one thing that holds it all together. Like a pin through the middle.”

“Pin through the middle…” Henry says. “Hang on. Hang on. I think I drew a bigger version of that…” He rummages around in his pockets and his pants until he finds one last sheet of paper and holds it up. “I left this one out because it didn’t fit, but maybe…”

This drawing does look different, like it doesn’t go with the maps at all. It’s got a big square on it, and then a circle inside, and then a squiggly image of a tree with winding roots and round leaves.

“This! This is what goes in that box—I’m almost positive,” Henry says. “I swear I’m not making this up. I drew this right after I drew the box with the squiggle. I think that’s what it looks like bigger.”

“And maybe this pin, the symbol with the tree, is where the link is,” Henry says. “Like when you saw Daniel. Maybe it’s what linked us together, how we found each other.”

“Yeah, maybe…” Helen says. “These maps are linked, and the space is linked, and…the answer is here somewhere. It’s all connected. Like a staircase that goes to all the floors of a building. Henry, we’ve got to figure this out before Monder finds us. He’s not going to be happy when he finds that you’re not drawing any more backwards maps for him in your little room.”

Anna sits on the ground with her back against red-orange rock. She and Kate have parked themselves and their bikes underneath an outcropping that provides them a shelter the size of a small carport. From this vantage point they can look out across the valley; although there’s little to look at except windblown shrubs and dust. The sky, for the moment, is mercifully empty of flying scorpion-like Tromindox or refurbished ‘toms. This is thanks to the dampening and misdirection field Anna projected across the mouth of the rock opening like an invisible spider web across a hole in the ground. For now, the ‘toms’ sensors will receive readings indicating that Anna and Kate are hundreds of miles from where they really are.

The Shard, dusty but still shining silver, leans blade-down on the back wheel of Kate’s bike. Kate sits cross-legged next to it, punching numbers into a device with a tiny keyboard in an effort to communicate with her husband and brother-in-law. She turns knobs one way and another and high-pitched whines come out, every so often resolving into the voice of a trucker or someone landing a small plane. But nothing from Gabriel or Christopher.

The women would much rather be chewing up miles on the road, but there’s little point in traveling at maximum speed without knowing where they’re going—or what they might find when they get there. For all they know, Helen and Henry have escaped from Monder and taken over the world. Or, Gabriel and Christopher have gotten captured, too. Or some other scenario has taken place that they haven’t thought of yet.

“Anything?” Anna asks.

“Nothing,” Kate answers. “This radio silence does not give me a warm fuzzy feeling.”

“Well, I guess we’ll have to head for the spot we agreed on with them before we left and hope that’s the right answer,” Anna says.

“That would appear to be the only choice we have,” Kate says. “But I don’t like it.”

“I don’t like it, either,” Anna admits. “And the stuff in Winston’s little book here just muddies the waters.” She holds up the tiny leather-bound volume Winston pressed into her hand before they left him in his trailer.

“Why? What does the book say?” Kate asks.

“Well, to be honest, I haven’t been able to make sense of a lot of this writing,” Anna says. “The title says, ‘On the Dispersal and Convergence of Time in Portal-Created Rifts,’ which sounds like somebody’s senior thesis.”

“Sounds exciting, too,” Kate says.

“But here’s what’s interesting,” Anna says. “You know those drawings you said your son had been making? The ones with the circles and notations on them?”

“Yeah, supposedly they are maps of some kind,” Kate says. “The Guild guy who wasn’t really Guild seemed overly interested in them.”

“Did they look like this?” Anna asks, holding up the book.

“Oh, wow—that’s exactly like the pictures Henry drew,” Kate says.

“Well,” Anna says, “it sounds to me like your child has the Vision, very strong. These are ancient Watchmaker maps. Notations that haven’t been used in forever. My Dad showed some of these to me when I was a little kid. And based on your description, Henry is drawing them out of his head. It’s as if someone loaned their knowledge to Henry, and passed the Vision over to him. Guild kids are known for their ability to see places and events, but only a few of them have ever been able to draw maps. And never in so much detail. Henry’s got an exceptional gift.”

“Let’s see more of them,” Kate says, sitting down next to her cousin.

The two women page through diagram after diagram made up of circles with symbols at the edges. Every so often one of the symbols appears repeated and bigger at the top of a page, with miniscule handwritten notes underneath.

On one page, they find a diagram containing an axe at its center that looks exactly like the Silver Shard.

“Well, that sure looks like our axe, but what are these other markings around it?” Kate says, squinting at the tiny drawing.

Around the Shard symbol someone drew a series of circles, as if the axe were contained in a sort of cylinder. The edges of those circles are connected together using dotted lines. Around the outside of the drawing, the notations consist mostly of mathematical formulas and scribbled lines and arrows. The page includes very little in the way of description. On the following page is lettered a single sentence:

CONFIRMATION OF SHARD-INDUCED CONVERGENCE ACHIEVED AT RIFT 27-077-A

The rest of that page is blank.

“’Shard-induced convergence’?” Kate repeats. “From the look of this, Winston was conducting experiments with space-time rifts similar to the one in which Monder is imprisoned. And it also looks like his experiments involved the special properties of the Shard. That would explain the Shard’s disappearance! Winston was keeping all this activity under wraps.”

“That would be just like Winston,” Anna says. “Always tinkering. But this was a lot of firepower to mess with all by himself. I’d be willing to bet there were accomplices.”

“There’s different handwriting in here,” Kate says. “It’s not all Winston’s.”

The writing in the book changes every so often, from looping letters to a tiny precise handwriting in blue ink. Winston had a research partner, for sure.

“This research team used the ancient notation to cover their tracks, I bet,” Anna says. “They knew only a few people would be able to read it. Hey, here’s a third handwriting. There was another partner. And this one, I recognize. My dad wrote that.”

“Uncle Julian was involved, too?” Kate says. “They kept all this work from us. I wonder why.”

“They kept it from everyone,” Anna says. “There have been many parties—Tromindox, humans, everyone—looking for the Shard for a very long time. And all along Winston and Julian and their team knew where it was. They were experimenting with it. One thing’s for sure—I don’t think they were using it to chop down trees.”

“Well, we need to use it to chop up a portal,” Kate says. “If we can just find where that portal is. We only need one of the fragments, you know, to do the job. And my daughter took off with it. I would be planning ways to strangle her if I wasn’t so worried about getting her back.”

“You can strangle her later,” Anna says. “We will go to the agreed-upon location, and we’ll get her for you so that you can get on with the strangling.”

Kate smiles. Something about the way Anna says things makes her believe.

“Here’s the good news,” Gabriel says, “we’re still at the same coordinates where we’re supposed to meet up with Anna and Kate and the Shard. The weird news, though, is that we seem to have changed our location in time and space without moving.”

“How is that possible?” Christopher asks. “Do you think we managed to get ourselves sucked up into a time-space rift, never to be heard from again?”

“I don’t believe that’s what happened,” Gabriel answers. “Look. The van’s here, the dog is here—the terrain hasn’t changed. What has changed is that we now have the ancient clan seat sitting in front of us. It’s like we brought the rift to us instead of the other way around.”

“Okay, so perhaps we just got Daniel sucked up into a rift, never to be heard from again,” Christopher says. “And this doesn’t appear to have brought us any closer to locating Helen or Henry, either.”

“Ah! But perhaps it has,” Gabriel says. “This is the building where Monder was banished into the rift. This is where he was tried and convicted. There has to be some significance to us seeing this particular place, in this particular location.” He shakes his head. “A place in a location. I don’t know what to make of that concept.”

“I thought we were trying to find a remote rift that nobody paid attention to,” Christopher says. “You know, someplace obscure, not the central place that Monder might be most aware of in the whole entire world.”

“Yes, well, you could say we chose poorly,” Gabriel says. “Or, depending on how you look at it, we hit the jackpot. Given the circumstances, I’m going with the latter.”

“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter now, does it? Is this building really here?” Christopher asks, eyeing the stone facade. “It looks solid enough.”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Gabriel answers. “Let’s go inside and take a look around.”

The brothers bound up the front steps. “After you,” Christopher says.

The imposing front doors of the ancient clan seat are shiny black, fitted with silver hinges and knobs. Gabriel pushes on the right-hand door and it swings open. An ornate doorknocker with a lion face chomping on a metal ring watches them enter. Christopher makes a face at it as he goes by.

“Hello?” Gabriel calls. “Anybody home? Butler? Cat? Anyone?”

Clarence the dog follows the men through the front door and immediately takes off around the perimeter of the room, sniffing as he goes. This is a grand entryway. A carved ceiling soars high overhead, and Clarence’s claws echo as he runs on the marble checkerboard floor.

A wide marble staircase swoops upward at the rear of the entry hall, but Clarence ignores that and runs around behind it. He disappears through a smaller door and into another room, the clicking of his claws fading.

“These family pictures sure are attractive,” Gabriel says, pointing up at an array of stuffy-looking portraits on the left-hand wall. Painted and photographed faces scowl down from ornately carved frames in every shape and size. “What a fun bunch.”

“Yeah, ancestors,” Christopher says. “That one looks exactly like cousin Anna.”

He’s pointing at the portrait imposed upon the center of the arrangement, a full-length painting of a lady in a black dress with a simple background and holding a single white rose. The woman has Anna’s face and red hair. However, this relative looks considerably less pleasant. Perhaps the model was pained by having to hold still so long.

“How many of these people have you met?” Christopher asks.

“Oh, let’s see…” Gabriel says. “That one, and that guy there, and that’s uncle Phil, and those twins, even though they don’t look like twins, oh, and I think that’s an early photo of Julian. And that’s Rose, there.”

“Right,” Christopher remembers. “Those twins were mean.”

“Yeah, you never liked them,” Gabriel says.

Clarence runs back into the room and stuffs his wet nose into Gabriel’s hand.

“Alright, boy,” Gabriel says, “show us what you found.”

Clarence takes them back through the little doorway behind the big staircase.

Back there they find another vast space, larger even than the entry hall. Windows stretch all the way across the back and carved wood panels line the walls. Through the windows they can see a few scraggly trees. But the floor is the most eye-catching aspect of this room. It is covered in a circular pattern that begins at the center and goes all the way out to the periphery.

“Hey check this out; this is a labyrinth,” Christopher says. He starts walking in a wide arc, heel to toe. “You go around and around and eventually you get to the middle.”

“If I’m not mistaken, this is the room where Monder’s trial was held,” Gabriel says. “How ironic somebody chose to decorate using a labyrinth. I wonder if they knew about the rift when they laid down these lines.”

“This labyrinth is huge,” Christopher says. “It would take forever to go all the way through.” He steps out of the path and crosses to the center, where he finds a circular piece of stone a few feet wide and stamped with the image of a tree with round leaves and meandering roots.

Christopher holds his hands out at the center of the labyrinth. “See? I got to the middle, I win…ugh!” He doubles over, clutching the sides of his head.

Gabriel runs to Christopher’s side. “Chris? What is it now? What’s happening?”

“It’s getting worse,” Christopher says. “A lot worse. And I see the yellow eyes again…” He stumbles forward and then holds still, taking deep breaths. “There. It’s not as bad.” He straightens back up. “These headaches are not fun.”

“No, they are not fun, and I doubt they are very safe, either,” Gabriel says. “We’ve got to get you some kind of permanent Tromindox removal. There has to be someone in the world who knows how to do that—completely extract all traces of Tromindox occupation.”

“Yeah, I would really like to meet that person,” Christopher says, stepping back into the circle. “Woa! Bad again. Bad…”

He steps out of the circle.

“Hey, hang on a second…”

He steps in again; the pain intensifies. Stepping out, it quiets down.

“There’s something strange about this spot right here,” Christopher says, pointing to the circle with the stamped tree. “I don’t know, an energy field or anchor or something. But I feel a major effect when I stand right there.”

“Well, let’s keep you out of there for now, then,” Gabriel says. “Protect your skull.”

“Indeed,” Christopher says. “I wonder what other mysteries this old place holds.”

The two of them turn to leave to explore the rest of this strange place.

But a loud whump!, like a sack of flour dropping on the floor, makes Gabriel and Christopher turn around. When they do, they find Daniel lying in the middle of the room, right at the labyrinth’s center.

Daniel springs to his feet. “Wait, what the—? Where—what, what just happened?” And then, “Ow. Owww—” His surprise had delayed his response, but now Daniel is feeling the full effects of a hard landing on solid stone. He clutches his shoulder.

“Daniel! You’re here,” Gabriel says. “It worked. Chris, it worked!” Gabriel grabs Daniel’s arms and shakes him as if to prove that he is real. Then he hugs him, hard. Daniel winces and then stands there, stiff, unsure how to react. He waits until Gabriel lets go.

“What happened?” Chris asks.

“I don’t know. I just fell,” Daniel says. “I was in these ruins, and there was a circle on the ground, like…like this one right here! He points down. Only, without the picture on it. Just stone. And I was standing there, and then, the bottom dropped out. And now I’m here.”

Christopher and Gabriel look at each other and say at the same time: “It worked!”

“There’s more. I saw them both,” Daniel blurts. “I mean, not just now, but I did see them…” Daniel struggles to explain. “I saw Henry, and then Helen. They’re both alive. Henry was in a little room, and, Helen, I saw her, too, but it was in the future. Way in the future. There were just ruins left. I think. But I saw her, I swear! I saw them both! No, wait, I saw Henry, but I only heard Helen. Calling out to me. I couldn’t find her.” His words tumble out. Gabriel and Christopher struggle to follow.

“Okay, hold on,” Gabriel says, holding out both hands. “You had contact with both Helen and Henry, but at two different times?”

“Yeah,” Daniel says. “I saw Henry when my uncle pushed me into a temporary rift. But time ran out and I was pulled away and I couldn’t make contact with him. And then just now I heard Helen calling out, and then I glimpsed her. But then she was gone.”

“You know what,” Daniel says, looking around at the room, “Both times, I was in some type of stone building. A big one. Kind of like this one. The first time, it was dark, and I climbed up and looked in the window. The next time there were only ruins left, just the foundation pretty much. But…” he turns around again, “I could swear it was this place. Just, different.”

“Good man, Daniel,” Gabriel says, slapping Daniel on the back. “Good man. You’ve brought us far. We’re gonna get the kids, and then take care of Monder on a permanent basis. This represents progress.”

“I helped by falling through a hole?” Daniel says. “Okay…”

“We may have found this place, but we still don’t know how to locate Helen and Henry,” Christopher points out.

“I know, but now we have discovered the convergence point,” Gabriel says. “Something is anchoring us to this spot, even if it’s at different times. Just like it says in the Chairman’s research; there’s a single pin running through this space and it looks to be at the center of this labyrinth. Many thanks to you, Daniel, for falling through it. He points at the tree image in the floor at the center of the labyrinth. “Somehow, that’s our way in. That’s how we will get the kids back.”

“Here’s the concept,” Gabriel continues, beginning to pace back and forth. “We find a way to collapse all of the space-times in this rift together at once, thereby gaining access to and retrieving Helen and Henry. And for that, we will use the one thing we know has enough firepower to focus all of the layers at once: the Shard.”

“Here’s the most important requirement,” Christopher says. “We have to accomplish all this without letting Monder out. That’s kind of the tricky portion. Since the whole point of the rift is that he remains in there. Forever.”

“Agreed. Keeping Monder from escaping is going to be the toughest part of this venture,” Gabriel says. “It will require extremely precise timing and the element of surprise. We have to do it all in one move: Shard in position, kids out, Monder in, close rift. That’s the way this has to go down. That’s where the Shard will make all the difference. It will give us the power we need.”

They hear two motorcycles arriving out front. Gabriel runs out, crosses the entry hall, and bounds down the front steps in time to see his wife and cousin climbing off of their bikes. On Kate’s back, the handle of the Shard shines bright in the sun.

“Ah! Good, you’re here,” Gabriel says, kissing Kate’s cheek as he runs by her toward the van. “Good news: We’ve got most of a plan. We just need to get set up and then we’re in business. Daniel fell through a hole which was very helpful.” He grabs an armful of equipment and runs back in the front door, trailing wires and cords behind him.

“They’re closing in!”

“Okay then, draw us a way out of here.”

“I don’t know how!”

“You do know how, Henry, just concentrate. But concentrate fast. Do like you did when you were changing the shape of your room. Remember?”

Henry clutches a pen in his fist. He squishes his eyes shut.

A creature dives out of the air and grabs Henry by the shoulders with birdlike claws, attempting to take off with him. On its digital face it displays the scowl of an angry old man. Its robes flap like wings. It is a more predatory version of the figures from the white room.

“Helen!” Henry screams, kicking his legs.

Helen throws her hands forward and the creature tears apart in mid-air before it can travel more than a few yards. It drops Henry to the ground and white wisps dissipate into nothing. But two more of them swoop down and grab hold of Henry and again Helen must focus her energy to destroy them. Helen is having trouble holding off these attackers and Henry is getting dropped a lot.

Meanwhile, the desert around them has degenerated into a stampede of the bizarre. Machines and animals and combinations of the living and mechanical walk and roll and slither in every direction. A bulbous metal thing with spider-like legs made of chopsticks tramples into a flock of winged worms, which flap angrily into the air. Every which way, Helen’s and Henry’s minds have jumbled together into a chaotic disaster filled with fears and creatures and confusion. It is a land of nightmares.

“We need a place to go, Henry; I can’t keep up with these attacks,” Helen says. “My super powers are helping less and less. Can you make us a shelter? Anything?”

Henry scribbles a big rectangle on his paper with a handle on one side. A trap door appears in the ground. Helen runs to it and pulls up on the handle.

There is only dirt underneath. She drops it back down with a puff of dust.

“We’ll need more than that!” Helen yells, raising her voice to be heard over the shrieks and roars and the squeaking of gears and hydraulics. “Could you make us a door that actually leads someplace?”

“I know, I know!” Henry shouts. “I’m trying!” He stomps his foot and closes his eyes again. A cloud of black creatures is forming high in the sky, and they can hear screeching noises through the wind. Helen jumps out of the path of a knee-high tank with tiny bat wings.

Helen knows she has to quiet her mind in order to stop creating more chaos and noise. Her anxiety is getting the best of her. It’s impossible to tell who is conjuring what, but she suspects the cloud of black creatures appearing above them right now is her own creation. They seem terribly similar to swarming Tromindox.

Henry draws another picture and a lone wooden door appears standing in front of Helen. But there’s no building behind it.

“I promise it works,” Henry says to his sister.

“It had better,” Helen says, and throws the door open. Inside, they find a staircase leading down into the ground. The swarm swoops down out of the sky. Just before it overtakes them Helen and Henry pile through the door and slam it shut behind them. They can hear hundreds of bodies crashing into the other side.

Wherever this place is, it’s dark. “I can’t see,” Henry says, hurrying down the steps as fast as he can but careful to keep the pencil in contact with the paper. He’s afraid of drawing them into an underground tomb. He doesn’t even know if that’s a possibility, but he definitely doesn’t want to find out.

Helen switches on the light in her knife handle and holds it out to illuminate their path. “Here. Let’s keep moving.” Light flickers on the walls and at least lets them see their feet.

Henry draws a passageway, and then another, and then a big opening where they stop to catch their breath. For once it’s quiet.

The underground refuge reminds Helen of the tunnels she fell into when she first came to the rift. That, too, was a place that took shape as she went and could easily fly out of control.

“We’ve got to find Renata,” Henry says.

“What?” Helen says. “Henry, we can’t!”

“She helped me. She’s trapped in here, too. Somewhere. I’m not going to abandon her.”

“Henry, that’s a dangerous thought right now,” Helen says. “What if you land right back in that little white room again? After all we’ve done to get out of there?”

“We can’t just leave Renata behind,” Henry says. “They’ll eat her or something.”

Helen looks Henry in the eye and puts her hands on his arms. “Henry, we don’t even have any idea how we are going to get back to Mom and Dad. We don’t know where we are. This place, it doesn’t have normal space or time in it. I don’t know why Monder hasn’t come after the fragment, or after you. It’s like he’s playing a cat-and-mouse game. Everything just keeps getting weirder. It’s not what I expected. It doesn’t make any sense at all. And if we try to go back right now, wherever ‘back’ might be, we could end up with you stuck in a little room, and me in the desert, wandering around, forever. I came here to get you, and I’m not going to lose you again. We’ve got to try and master this situation and figure out how to escape. And we have to do it together. Okay?”

Henry looks at his sister, but he still pictures Renata’s face. “Okay.”

“Now where is that music coming from?” Helen asks.

“What music?”

Helen puts an index finger in the air and tilts her head. It’s faint, but she can hear piano music. Classical. Chopin. A waltz.

“It’s this way,” Helen says.

There’s a different staircase leading back upward. The music seems to come from there.

“Uh, Helen? I didn’t put those stairs there,” Henry says. “I didn’t draw that.”

“So there’s someone else creating this place, too? Who plays piano?” Helen asks. “Could you hear music when you were in your little white room?”

“No,” Henry answers. “There was nothing but weird monsters in robes and pens and paper and Renata. And me, trying to get out.”

“Okay, well, let’s investigate. Maybe we can find a clue as to where we are. Maybe there’s a connection up there, back to where we came from. In any case, it’s better than running around a desert being dive-bombed by our own imaginations or taking up residence permanently under the ground.”

Henry doesn’t like the idea of climbing stairs that he didn’t create, but he follows Helen anyway.

These new stairs take much longer to climb than the others took to descend. Helen and Henry struggle upward, Helen listening for the piano and Henry hearing nothing. When they finally reach the top, instead of a door they find a flat square of wood over their heads. Helen pushes up on it, but it appears locked.

“I don’t like this,” Henry says.

Helen pushes harder, but it doesn’t budge. And then, out of nowhere, the lock opens itself and drops off of the latch into nothingness below.

“I didn’t do that,” Helen says.

“I didn’t do it,” Henry says.

“Someone else is definitely here,” Helen says.

They lift up the trap door expecting the unexpected, and they are not disappointed. The desert is gone, replaced by a vast room with high ceilings and plaster walls. At one end they can see the framework of a sweeping staircase in the process of being built.

They climb out, still half expecting to be run over by more frightening imaginary creatures. But none appear here. All is quiet.

Except the music.

“That piano,” Helen says, “maybe it’s a message—someone on the outside trying to communicate with us. Maybe it’s a clue to finding the way out. Does Renata play piano?”

“No, she doesn’t. And I still don’t hear any piano,” Henry says.

Helen turns in circles but she still can’t tell what direction the music is coming from.

“What is this place? It looks like they’re not done building it,” Henry says.

He’s right. They can see the sky right through the roof beams. Everything around them looks incomplete; columns don’t reach to the ceiling, stairs have no bannisters, there are holes where the windows and doors should be. Sunlight spills in everywhere and creates criss-cross patterns on the floor.

The floor looks like an unfinished stone puzzle. Tiles lie everywhere, many of them arranged in a circular pattern, but more sit in big stacks against the walls.

“This is some rich person’s house,” Henry observes.

“Seriously,” Helen agrees. “This place is huge. And it looks like whoever-it-is can afford all the fancy gold-plated doorknobs and stuff they want.”

The back wall is only a frame, with a long row of window frames waiting for glass. Henry looks out one of the empty windows at the trees outside.

Helen notices a single round tile leaned up against the bottom step of the future staircase. There are no others like it. “Wow,” she says, eyeing the tree design stamped into the stone. “This looks like a Silverwood symbol. Like we saw in those notebooks Mom had that time. You know the ones, with the legends written in them? About the tree in the mountains?”

“Yeah, I remember,” Henry says, turning from his view. “Let me see.” Something about the symbol is familiar to him. “I’ve seen this, but not in the legends,” he says. Henry digs the thick pile of maps out of his pocket. “Helen, that’s this.” He points to the one symbol that appears on all of the maps, and then the bigger version that he drew on its own page. The shape is an exact match with the tree on the tile. Round leaves, meandering roots.

“That’s the link!” Helen says. “That’s the pin we found that connects all of the maps together. This must be the real-world version. But how? How does it work?” She places her hand on the stone tree. “How does it fit?” She rolls the heavy circle out onto the floor and lays it down. It’s just a simple piece of stone; it doesn’t seem like a portal. Could she activate it somehow? She lifts it up and looks at the underside – nothing there. This appears to be nothing more than a decorative rock.

Henry comes toward the stone to get a closer look. But when he gets halfway across the room, something happens to him. It’s as if his sight goes blank, and all of his thoughts crash into his head at once. He sees the past, and the present, and the future, and himself falling through it. And he sees his parents, and Clarence the dog. And a pile of electronic equipment, and Christopher’s face. And moonlight, and the red van, and the white room…

He stumbles backwards. “Woa,” he says. “Something happened in my mind.”

“Are you okay?” Helen asks. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Henry says. He puts his hand on his forehead. So dizzy…

He tries to cross the room again, and again he feels like he is falling. He sees a motorcycle. And a piano. The floor spins. Then he takes another step forward and everything vanishes. He’s back in the big unfinished room with Helen.

“Helen, I saw a piano!” Henry says.

“Where? Henry, what happened?” Helen asks.

“It’s something with that tree,” Henry says. “It has to be. It’s in the maps and it’s here, and I saw Mom and Dad, Helen, and…I feel weird.” He sits down.

Helen can’t find anything about the stone that suggests any kind of special characteristics. She slaps her hand down on it. “Why can’t you tell me anything, tree? Why are you here?”

She stops to consider. “Why are you here…” Henry, maybe it’s not the stone itself, but where the stone is that matters. Or where the stone belongs when the floor is finished. Where were you when you started feeling strange?”

“Right there,” Henry points toward the middle of the room. Many of the tiles have been laid down there, a circular pattern working its way out. And in the center there’s a round gap—roughly the same size as the tree stone.

Helen looks down at the blank spot, stepping around it carefully. “Henry what if this is the way out, right here?”

“Or it could go nowhere,” Henry says. “How can we tell?”

“Let’s try something,” Helen says, pulling out her knife and flipping it open. She sits cross-legged next to the circular spot, careful not to step in it.

Next she reaches out with the knife and carves in the loose dust: ARE YOU THERE H+H

Just as it did in the tunnels when she first arrived, and when she first saw Henry, the carved letters immediately start to fade. Soon they are gone entirely.

They wait.

And then, letters write themselves in the floor: YES

Helen and Henry look at each other, eyes wide. “This is it,” Helen says. “This is the way out. Back to normal space-time.”

“How do we know who is on the other side of this?” Henry says. “What if it’s Monder, or a big cave full of Tromindox, just sitting there waiting to eat us?

“Let’s ask something that only Mom or Dad could answer,” Helen says.

But before Henry can come up with a question, a wad of paper comes popping out and rolls onto the floor.

Helen opens up the paper and flattens it. The piano music sounds closer now, echoing in her ears. She wonders again why Henry can’t hear it.

She reads out loud: We are here. You are in a rift. Going to collapse it. Timing important. When we say GO you jump through. Not before.

“Jump through?” Henry asks. “Is that going to hurt?”

“Who cares?” Helen says. “The important thing is to get out.”

And then another piece of paper pops through. Henry grabs it and flattens it out.

It’s a photograph of Clarence.

“It’s them! It’s really them!” Henry yells.

“I wonder how long we wait until we’re supposed to go through,” Helen says. “A minute? A day?”

“What if the crazy monster things come flying in here?” Henry asks, glancing uneasily at the open windows. They have no protection in this frame of a house.

A device pops out of the circle and clatters on the stone. Helen grabs it and turns it on. Words immediately fill the screen.

WE ARE CALIBRATING STAY THERE DON’T MOVE

The piano music is louder still. Now it sounds as if it is coming from right over Helen’s shoulder. She stands, still looking for the source. The notes get louder and louder, drowning out her thoughts.

“Helen?” Henry says. “It says, thirty seconds.”

“Helen?” Henry stands and looks at his sister.

Helen turns to face her brother, next to the circle in the floor. She smiles at him.

Henry looks at the device. “Okay, three, two, one, now! Now, Helen! Ready?”

Helen puts her hands on Henry’s arms and looks him in the eyes.

“Henry, I’m sorry, but I’ve got something I have to do. You be safe and take care of Clarence until I get there.”

Helen kisses Henry on the cheek, and pushes him into the circle.

“No!” Henry screams, flailing his arms as he stumbles in. But he cannot regain his balance and he is gone.

Henry calls out for Helen, and then for Renata. He feels weightless. He sees nothing. He tries to move and to see, but he can’t. He feels his body being pulled, out of his control.

“It’s okay, Henry,” a voice says. It’s Renata.

“What?” Henry says. “Renata? Where are you?”

“It’s okay,” Renata says. “I was there to help you. Don’t worry about me.”

“But where are you?” Henry asks.

“Don’t worry,” Renata says again. “You made me, Henry. You needed a companion, someone to help you figure out what to do. To keep you calm. But I’m just a part of you. Be free, now.”

Henry falls, and falls, and then hits something so hard that it knocks all of the air out of his lungs. He tries to get up, but everything spins and he loses consciousness.

Kate engulfs Henry in her arms and rocks back and forth on her knees. She brushes back his hair and looks at his face. “He’s not breathing.”

On cue Henry sucks in a gulp of air and begins gasping like a fish on land.

“Mom!” Henry says, suddenly animated, although still short of breath. “Helen pushed me in. She didn’t come, Mom. She said she had to do something. I couldn’t hold on…”

“We know,” Kate says, stroking Henry’s hair. “You’ve been out cold. We knew when she didn’t come through that something had happened. We tried to get a hold of her, but she’s not responding.”

“Hey, kid,” Gabriel says, crouching down to take a look at Henry. All the body parts seem to be present. “You came through at a high rate of speed. Sorry about the hard landing.”

“I’m okay,” Henry says. “Dad, Helen didn’t come. She said she had to do something. What would she have to do? I thought she was there to get me. She didn’t come…” Now he’s repeating himself. His head feels fuzzy.

Christopher is on his stomach in front of a bank of monitors and components wired together. Daniel sits cross-legged next to him.

“We’ll get her, Henry,” Christopher says. “If we can’t go to her, we’ll bring her to us.”

“No doubt,” Daniel agrees. “We’ll figure it out, don’t worry.”

Henry looks around at the monitors and pieces of equipment everywhere. Wires run all over the floor and even into the circle at the center.

Wait, the circle at the center?

Henry realizes he is in the same room he was before, except now it seems older. More complete. There are walls and doors and windows. Like they finished building it.

“This is the same place!” Henry says. “It’s exactly the same as where I was. Except, different. It’s old, or something.”

“That’s right,” Daniel says. “You were in a unique layer of a time-space rift. You should’ve seen the version I got. It was nothing but a ruined foundation.”

“But they’re all anchored to this one spot,” Gabriel says, pointing at the circle. “That’s the point of convergence. This rift has more layers than a high rise parking garage. Looks like Monder has been busy splitting the thing apart. Probably looking for a way out.”

Henry fishes papers out of his pockets. “Look. I drew maps. With all different levels. They go on top of each other. And they all have this tree, see? This is how we found the spot. The tree in the circle.”

“There it is indeed,” Daniel says. “Look at that. Watchmaker maps out of a kid’s head. That’s amazing. I want to know how you do that, Henry.”

“I don’t know,” Henry says. “They were just there. Like I already knew about them. But I didn’t. The people in there made me write them down.”

“I know; I saw you,” Daniel says.

“Where? In my room?” Henry says. “But nobody…”

“Only for a second,” Daniel explains. “I wasn’t spying on you. That would be creepy.”

“The whole thing is creepy,” Gabriel points out.

“But why didn’t Helen come back with me?” Henry’s voice is rising. “How will we get her back now? She said she could hear music. But I couldn’t hear it. What are we going to do?” Tears well up in Henry’s eyes. “I left her, Mom!”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Henry,” Kate says. “Helen made her own decision. We don’t know why. But we have to help her. If we can figure out how.”

“Whatever Helen is after, it has to do with Monder,” Christopher says. “I pulled messages out of one of the machines we took from Council headquarters. They were pretty scrambled, but at some point, it looks like Monder contacted Helen and tried to get her to trade the fragment for Henry. That’s probably when she took the fragment and went into the rift herself.”

“But she got me back! I’m right here,” Henry cries. “She did her job. We’re done. Finished. Why didn’t she come out?”

“We’re not in the driver’s seat at present, kid,” Gabriel says. “We don’t exactly know. I realize that’s not a satisfying answer.”

“Can I go back in and get her?” Henry asks. “I was just there. I know how.”

“No way, kid; although that is a very brave offer,” Gabriel says. “You of all people know how complicated the rift is. We can’t tell which layer she’s on. You came through, and then we lost hold of the spot. So if we sent you back in, who knows where—or when—you would end up.”

“Henry, does Helen still have the fragment?” Anna asks.

“Yeah, it’s around her neck,” Henry says. “She said it was Monder bait, whatever that means. I thought we were trying to get away from Monder, not catch him.”

“We can’t close the rift now, not with Helen and Monder and both fragments in there,” Gabriel says. He’s begun pacing around again.

A low hum comes from outside and Anna and Kate immediately recognize the unmistakable sound of flying ‘toms. It sounds like a large number of them, too. Far more of them than they battled with out on the road.

Clarence runs to the front door and starts barking. Clarence almost never barks.

Anna joins Clarence in the doorway. She can see right away that they’ve got a sizeable problem.

“Everybody, positions!” Anna shouts, grabbing a weapon leaning against the wall. “We’ve got ‘toms.”

Everyone jumps up to prepare, grabbing weapons and heading for vantage points. Gabriel and Kate take up positions at the back while Anna and Daniel head for the front. Christopher and Henry remain by the circle to monitor the equipment and scan for any sign of Helen. Time is running short.

Anna snaps a round, amber-colored viewing glass over her eye and peers through it at the approaching cloud.

“It’s a big number,” Anna calls out. “We’re going to need to work fast.”

“Just to be clear, I have zero experience with shooting down flying things,” Daniel says. “I’m generally a pacifist.”

“I can appreciate that, Daniel,” Anna says. “However, if you don’t want to be torn apart, this may be a good time to take on a different perspective. At least temporarily.”

“Fair enough,” Daniel says, and powers up an energy gun, resting its barrel on the windowsill. “Tell me when to fire.”

The hum turns to a whine and the flying onslaught sweeps into range. “You can take out a bunch with one shot,” Anna says. “The ‘toms are buckets of bolts, refurbished critters mostly. They don’t think for themselves too well; they’re meant to be expendable and to act as a unit. So aim for the big groups.”

“Big groups, got it,” Daniel says. “Big groups.”

“Fire!” Anna shouts, and begins shooting out the window. Hundreds of flying creatures pour over the tops of the trees, their engines and mechanics buzzing and whining. The first few shots take out dozens of them and send pieces and parts raining onto the ground. Others, though, get through and are slamming into the walls.

Anna grabs a tiny drive and shoves it into the side of her weapon. The drive is loaded with scramblers—bits of code designed to disable the ‘toms’ navigation. She fires again, and this time many of the ‘toms suddenly fly out of control and dive into the ground.

“Keep firing. They’ll break through the windows!” Anna says. But she can already hear shattering glass upstairs. They can’t protect the whole structure; they don’t have enough people.

In the back, the tree cover is making it difficult for Kate and Gabriel to see the ‘toms coming. They listen intently for the clanking and whining of the creatures’ mechanical parts, firing frantically the second they come into view.

Christopher keeps tweaking the equipment, hoping for any kind of signal from Helen, or the fragment, or anything. All he can bring up is static. And his head is pounding.

And why can’t he see anything? He clutches at his skull, but the pain is deep inside behind his eyes. Eyes. There are those yellow eyes again, but this time they look different. Everything looks different. And in a flash, Christopher has an idea.

“Hey Henry, hand me some of those maps of yours,” Christopher says, still holding onto his forehead with one hand.

Henry passes Christopher the papers. Christopher pages through them, holding them up to the screen. His face contorts with pain and he can barely open his eyes.

“Uncle Chris, are you okay?” Henry asks.

“Yeah, kid,” Christopher says, “but I need your help. I need you to send a message at the right second. When I tell you. I need you to write something. Can you do that for me?”

Henry nods.

Christopher jumps up and grabs the Shard from its spot by the wall.

They can hear windows smashing in all directions now. They know there are ‘toms pouring into every room.

Helen is walking, turning her head, trying to determine where the music is coming from. She passes through double doors, her boots creaking on the wooden floors of the outer rooms. She is sure she can find the source by listening for it to get louder.

But no matter which direction Helen goes, the music does not change. It becomes no louder or softer, seems no closer or farther away. The waltz repeats again and again. Helen crosses another threshold, and another, climbs up one staircase and then descends a different one. She runs her hand along the top of an elaborately carved banister of mahogany. Was that banister there before? She can’t remember. The next room now has windows and finished walls. In the halls the columns now reach to the ceiling where before they were incomplete. She has the uneasy feeling she is in a new version of the underground tunnels from before; a space that is building itself as she moves through it.

Helen touches the fragment around her neck and is surprised to find that it is warm. She lifts it up and looks at it. The broken edge has a pale orange glow. She must be getting closer to the other fragment, and maybe to Monder. But where is he?

She passes a doorway and for a split second she can swear the music is just a tiny bit louder. She backs up, goes forward again. Sure enough, there’s a miniscule change, not much, but enough. She turns and follows it.

Now she can hear the music below her, coming from somewhere on the first floor. Is she going in circles? Is this some kind of game? She reminds herself to focus, keep as calm as she can. No need to send things spinning out of control again. She can’t afford that. She must stay alert.

Helen reaches the bottom of another staircase and from here the music is decidedly louder. She can see a series of doors along a central hall, all of them closed except for one which stands open only a crack. Cautiously she approaches the open door and pushes on it. Here the music is much louder. She peeks in and spies the leg of a piano, a drape of black fabric. Here, finally, is the source of the Chopin waltz.

Helen enters the room cautiously. A black grand piano, its lid propped open, sits at the far end of an enormous room in front of a wall of windows overlooking a green forest. It is the same room where Helen started, but now the labyrinth in the floor is complete and the stone shines. The walls are covered in carved wood panels and ornate tapestries depicting mythical monsters in red and gold thread.

Monder sits at the piano with his eyes shut, swaying as he plays. There’s a skeleton sitting on a stool behind him, wearing the other fragment around its neck. This second fragment glows orange just as Helen’s does. Monder’s robes, covered in black-on-black scrolled patterns, cascade onto the floor. His collar sits high behind his head and his wrists emerge from immaculate white cuffs.

“Ah! Here you are,” Monder says, continuing to play. “I knew, given enough time, you would find me.”

Helen says nothing. She looks carefully around the room, plannng her approach. All she needs is one shot, one chance to dissolve the Tromindox. Her blood will break him down into a pile of dust. She has imagined this moment so many times, but now that she’s actually here, the prospect of slaying a seven-foot-tall shape shifter seems much more complicated than it did in her head.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Monder says, still playing. “Chopin. So many composers. I’ve yet to hear them all. It takes time. I do love Schubert.”

“You’ve put up a good fight, Helen Silverwood,” Monder continues. “I shall mention this when I am out and about in the world. Give you Silverwoods a good legend. Since you’ll be extinct, that’s the least we can do.

“You’re not going to get out and about,” Helen says.

Monder stops playing and sets his long hands in his lap.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Monder says, “did you think this was about me breaking out? Escaping from my terrible rift where I am helplessly imprisoned? I’m afraid you’re mistaken.”

“I’ve been out already. I can leave whenever I want.”

The gears turn in Helen’s head. The fragments, the quest to bring the Shard here, the maps, even taking Henry—it was all, bait. A ruse, to bring the Silverwoods to a single location. She sees it now. All of it. And now her family is gathered together, along with the fragments and even the Shard. All by design.

“No, dear,” Monder goes on, “this isn’t about me getting out. This is about the Silverwoods going in—into the ground. And now, here you are. Here you all are. The clan leadership and its future leadership. If you want to kill a beast, cut off the head.”

Before Helen can respond, something shoots into her stomach and she stumbles backward. She doubles over, dropping to her knees. She grabs onto the thing and tries to pull it out but it won’t budge. What is it? She looks down. It’s shiny and black with barbs like enormous porcupine quills. And it’s still attached to Monder.

“Lot of good your special blood will do you, spilled all over,” Monder says.

This makes no sense. How is Monder immune? Why does he not dissolve?

“I need very little to kill you, stupid child,” Monder says, walking toward her. “Just a sharp object. Anything will do. A butter knife. Doesn’t matter. I’m not hungry, anyway.”

“Oh, and I don’t need that fragment thing you are wearing, either. But I’ll take it, just the same. It will look nice with the other one.” He reaches down and snaps the chain from around Helen’s neck. Then he does a light tiptoe dance as he moves back. “Oh, I’d better be careful not to step on the magic blood, hadn’t I?”

With each breath the claw digs deeper into Helen’s abdomen. She clutches at it with her hand, trying desperately to keep it from stabbing all the way through her body, but the barbs cut into her palm and she feels as if her hand will split in two.

Monder yanks his arm, setting the quill loose like a lizard’s tail. He is unharmed, but Helen is pinned down like an insect in a lab. His tentacle rolls back up into his robes and he straightens his sleeve as he turns to walk back toward the piano.

“Has your mother ever told you how I came to be in this place, Helen?” Monder says, running a finger along the piano’s edge. “Has Kate ever shared the story of how she should have been the one imprisoned instead of me?”

Helen can say nothing. Her insides are on fire. Her head rolls back on the floor. She tries to clear her sight, to find the circle at the center of the floor. Where is it?

“I didn’t think so,” Monder says. “Why would Kate want to lower her standing in the eyes of her own children? Because I must say, you would admire her a great deal less if you knew what really happened. Do you want to know what happened?”

Helen can taste blood in her mouth.

“Kate Silverwood hasn’t always been dirty bounty hunter scum,” Monder says. “Oh, no. Her real career, her calling if you will, was that of an assassin. And she was good at it—so I heard. Yes, a real professional killer. But you see, eventually she murdered one of her own. And in doing so, she also murdered someone very important to me.”

The barbs burn Helen’s hand, but she can’t let go or she’ll get gutted. Her vision narrows and she can’t get enough air.

“Yes, Kate Silverwood, assassin,” Monder says. “I suppose the job carries certain risks. Like, for example, taking the life of the wrong person. Not that she cared, mind you. Your mother is accustomed to killing. But when she was faced with a choice, whether to let her own family member live or die, she chose die. She knew exactly what she was doing. Her victim was both human and Tromindox, yes. But regardless of her genetic makeup, she had the right to live. And Kate Silverwood took that right away from her. And in doing so, she took her away from me.”

Monder turns and stares down at Helen with hateful fiery eyes. He knows this girl can’t hurt him now. Helen can’t even raise her arms. He hisses at her. “Kate Silverwood murdered her own family, and took away the one person—the one Tromindox—I cared about. Your mother is a lowlife murdering liar.”

“I will never believe anything you say!” Helen screams, emptying her lungs. Her words sound garbled in her ears and her legs are filling with liquid lead.

“Well, it’s the truth,” Monder says. “Your lovely mother, Kate Silverwood, should be the one in here—not me. That woman committed cold-blooded murder, and then she made sure that I was the one convicted for it. That I was the one blamed, banished for hiding Tromindox in human form among you. Accused of infiltrating the Silverwood clan. Go on, Helen, do the research. Look into your family’s storied history. You’ll learn what happened. Oh, unless you’ve bled to death first, in which case…I guess you won’t.” He walks back over to the skeleton, dangling the second fragment from his fingers.

Helen lifts herself up on one shaking elbow, scraping her boots back and forth to try and keep conscious. She manages to get up on all fours and spits out a mouthful of blood onto the floor. It forms a puddle, and flows into the indentations in the stone…

Scratched marks appear on the floor that clearly spell the word: NOW.

Henry.

Helen can no longer speak. She reaches out with her left hand, groping for the circle at the center of the floor. With her thumb she finds the edge of the round center stone. She flails her hand and feels nothing at first, but then her fingers hit an invisible object, heavy. She grabs at it with all her strength, closing her fingers around the handle of the Shard, now shining silver.

Monder ignores Helen and pops open the box around the Chairman’s neck containing the other fragment. As he brings Helen’s fragment toward its partner, the broken edges glow brighter and blue lines of current jump between them.

Helen rises up on one knee, then pulls her feet under her. She drags the Shard along the floor, sparks flying from its blade as it scrapes the stone.

Monder hears Helen and turns. There, at the center of the room, he beholds a girl half bent over, one hand clutching a spine in her stomach, the other barely hanging onto the handle of an axe nearly the size of her whole body. She wobbles back and forth on her feet, unable to lift her eyes from the floor.

The two fragments throw out orange rays of light as they meld together into a single portal. “You can’t lift that axe,” Monder says, turning his back on Helen to admire the now-complete coin. “That Shard is solid silver. It’s too much for you. Don’t be stupid. Many thanks to your family for bringing it, though. It will look very nice on display somewhere. Right next to this pretty coin. Perhaps I’ll include a plaque with the Silverwood legend, too. You know, as a nod to extinct species. That’s what you do, right? In your natural history museums?

“Isn’t that paradoxical? That your storied family history will ultimately destroy you? Ironic, for time travelers. Your past catches up with you—quite literally.”

As Monder watches the portal, Helen stumbles forward, nearly falling with each step, until she stands at the exact center of the room. The Shard’s weight tears at her arm muscles. Monder is right: She can’t lift it.

Still clutching the quill in her stomach with her right hand, she tightens her grip on the Shard’s handle and begins to haul her body around in a circle.

The axe drags around with her. At first the blade only wobbles around on the ground. But the edges of the round stone at the center of the floor guide Helen’s feet. She goes around once, twice, picks up speed, and soon the Shard lifts from the floor. Her fingers close around the handle. Her arm seems lighter. The Shard rises silently into the air, nearly reaching shoulder height. Black spots fill Helen’s eyes, but the Shard rises even higher as if powering itself, Helen’s hand guiding its path.

And then, Helen lets the Shard go.

The Shard cuts the air, spinning blade around handle. Monder never sees it coming. The axe cleaves Tromindox, portal, and skeleton and smashes into the wall.

A deafening blast, and a wave of white-hot light burns Helen’s face. Cracking, crumbling stones fall all around her. She drops to her knees, then rolls onto her side, seeing every timeframe collapse into her mind at once: ruins, finished walls, ‘toms dropping from the sky.

Monder is gone. The portal is gone. The axe is lodged in the charred remains of a wall, having cleanly and completely separated the skeleton’s head from its body.

“Thank you,” Helen says. She rolls up in a ball on the circle at the center of the floor, and everything goes black.

A mountain path. Helen sees bright green ferns growing in bunches close to the ground; moss droops from tree branches. The trail winds upward, switching back on itself again and again. She can smell rain in the air.

As she climbs upward, the trees thin and big boulders appear. The path meanders more now, winding around and sometimes disappearing amongst the rocks. But it still rises toward the sky.

Loose dirt and scree slide underfoot. The air is thin, the trees small and shrubby. Helen scrambles over granite, nearly on her hands and knees, and then a flash of light burns into her eye.

The tree of silver reaches for the sky from between the rocks. Its twisted roots embrace the granite. Light bounces off of it and scatters in every direction.

But as Helen draws closer, she can see that many of the roots are not roots at all but wires that snake up from the ground and choke the trunk. Thick tubes strangle the branches. Jagged metal restraints, bolted deep into the wood, disfigure and split the bark. This is merely the smothered shape of a tree.

Helen reaches out to touch the tree, desperate to find living tissue in-between the many tubes and restraints. When she lays her hands on it the tree’s inner life unfolds, thousands of years gathered up within its rings. Memories and images of time and space unwind, layer after layer, a spiral spinning back to its earliest life deep inside.

Helen sees a young child pulling down a leaf, embarking on a journey through time. There is a couple escaping into the future with their first child. The Book of the Future. . A branch, lying on the ground. The Silver Shard. Countless passages, journeys out and back again, layered on top of one another. A life with branches upon branches, roots reaching down into the Earth. She sees a tinkerer repairing tears in the fabric of time and a scribe making intricate maps by candlelight.

Bolts come loose and metal restraints peel away from the tree’s trunk. The wires and tubes relinquish their hold, unwind, and dissipate or slither back into the ground. Leaves unfold and the bark breathes free again.

Helen watches a single new leaf sprout from the tiniest branch.

Helen’s arm feels heavy. She struggles to lift it. Perhaps it is broken. Maybe the Shard blew it to bits.

She looks down to find that it is not her arm imposing the weight, but the round head of her brother, fast asleep next to her in the hospital bed.

“Hey, Henry,” Helen says, patting his white-blond mop of hair. “I can’t move.”

Henry’s head pops up.

“Helen! Helen! Helen! Helen! Helen’s awake!” Henry shouts, jumping down off of the bed and running toward the door.

“We’re right here,” Kate says, unfolding herself from a square chair in the corner. “Henry, come back. Don’t alarm the staff.”

“How are you feeling, kid?” Gabriel asks his daughter. His face looks gaunt, like he hasn’t slept in a long time. He stands by the bed and brushes her bangs with his fingers.

“Okay,” Helen says. She becomes aware of the bandages wrapped around and around her torso. She is delighted to see there is no quill sticking out of her.

“You got totally stabbed!” Henry says, as if this fact confers upon Helen a very special status. “I made you something.” He crawls around under the bed, rummaging. When he re-emerges, he’s got a piece of paper. He hands it to his sister.

It’s a drawing of Helen, but this time there are no spots or fangs. She’s flying; she’s got a cape—like a superhero.

“Wow. Thanks, Henry,” Helen says, and gathers up her brother in her arms.

“I drew it when I was in the little room,” Henry says.

“I will keep it forever,” Helen says.

“Hey, she’s up!” Christopher and Daniel come through the wide hospital door, careful to close it behind them. They don’t want to raise questions. Not everyone knows they are here.

Christopher grabs his bass from the corner. “I wrote you a song,” he says.

“Oh, my god!” Helen says.

“Wait, I haven’t played the song yet,” Christopher objects. “You can be amazed in a minute.”

“You cut your hair!”

Daniel stands at the foot of the bed, saying nothing. He looks down. “Yeah, I did,” he says, running his hand over his now-short brown hair. It’s cropped close on the sides, but he did leave a bit of a mess on top. He’s got a lightning bolt worked into one side. And a start on a goatee.

Helen stares at him. “The dreads are gone!”

Daniel can think of nothing to say, so he repeats, “Yeah.”

“I like it,” Helen says.

Daniel brightens. “You do?”

“I do; it looks good,” Helen says. “I mean, it’s your hair. You know, I mean, I don’t have to approve or anything. But it does. Look good, I mean.” Helen attempts a lighthearted laugh but her stomach hurts too much.

Henry, Christopher, Gabriel and Kate swivel their heads back and forth as if watching a tennis match. This is good.

“Anyway, I’m gonna go soon,” Daniel says. “I’m gonna study to be a Watchmaker. You know, pick up the skills. There’s a lot of work to do out there and almost nobody to do it. I talked to my uncle and he says go for it. So I’ll be an apprentice for a while.”

“That’s great,” Helen says, nodding. “Really. Great.”

“Okay, can I play my song now?” Christopher says. He puts a foot up on a chair and begins strumming.

Christopher teaches everyone the lyrics, which change every few minutes, and the tune, which also changes, but soon everyone is singing along—quietly, so as not to disturb anyone outside.

Helen and Kate sit together on the roof, legs dangling over the side. Car horns and engine noises echo up at them from below.

“You know, in a way, you’re lucky you came back injured,” Kate says to her daughter.

Helen looks surprised. “Why?”

“Because if you hadn’t been injured, I would have injured you,” Kate says. “I didn’t know whether to hug you or strangle you. What possessed you to take off with the fragment by yourself like that?”

“Monder said not to tell anyone or he’d kill Henry,” Helen says. “And it was my fault Henry got taken. I’m the one who let go of him. I had to be the one to try and get him back. And then when I did find him it just turned out…complicated.” She looks down at the street below.

“Look,” Kate says, “I am the last person to second-guess anybody when they are forced to make decisions under extreme pressure. Your father and I both have had to make impossible choices many times. We’ve had to go with our gut, and do the best we could with what we had. Sometimes it feels like that’s all we do. And I admire you, Helen, for doing what you felt was the right thing.”

Helen looks up. “Really?”

“Yes, really, when I am not considering strangling you,” Kate says. “Helen, I want you to remember this: We are a clan. We are a scattered, chaotic clan. We have almost been destroyed many times. We don’t all think the same way—in fact, we rarely do. But that’s our advantage. It’s not a weakness. Remember that. Okay?”

“Okay,” Helen says. She sits quietly for a moment. “Mom, I saw the tree.”

“What do you mean?” Kate asks.

“The Silverwood tree. I saw it, more than once. It was being attacked, Mom. It had these restraints on it. Like someone was trying to strangle it to death with wires and things. It was kind of more of a machine than a tree.”

“Really,” Kate says, considering what her daughter has said.

“Yeah, but the last time I saw it, the bolts were coming off, and it was breaking free. I reached out and touched it, Mom. In my dream. What does that mean? That I saw the tree?”

“You don’t see the tree,” Kate says. “The tree sees you.”

“What does that mean?” Helen asks. “I saw…”

“You saw a reflection,” Kate says. “Helen you are getting older; your abilities are expanding. Your perspective is expanding. You and your brother, you both have the Vision. Two different versions, but it’s there. And Anna was right, the Vision is very strong. You saw the tree looking back at you, telling you about where you are in your life and in the clan.” She puts a hand on Helen’s shoulder and smiles. “I don’t know exactly how to interpret what was reflected to you. You have a long distance to go, but you are on your way.”

“There is a lot to learn, and so many people you haven’t met yet,” Kate adds. “Guild. Watchmakers. You need training. Your brother needs training. Shoot, I need training. We’ve got to manage your capabilities, give you control.”

“What will Anna do?” Helen asks. “Where will she go now that she’s not on a hidden ship in the middle of the ocean?”

Kate lets out a sigh. “Anna has always operated on her own wavelength, done things her own way. I suspect she’ll continue on her journey by herself. That’s her personality. But I’m sure we’ll see her again. Next time we need to track down a crazy mythical weapon of some kind.”

“I want to know what happened when I was a baby,” Helen says. “Why you and Dad jumped into the future with me.”

“That would be one of those decisions I was referring to,” Kate says. “Your father and I were in an impossible situation, and we did the best we could. We found out that someone we cared about was not who she said she was. We had reason to believe that the Tromindox had infiltrated us, that the clan itself was in danger of extinction. Banishing Monder and escaping with you was our best chance at survival. Or so we thought at the time…” Kate falls silent. The two of them sit for a long moment, together in time and space.

“You know, there have been times when humans and Tromindox have tried to make peace,” Kate says.

“Seriously?” Helen asks.

“Really,” Kate says. “But it has always ended badly. The two species simply cannot grow to trust one another. It is a predator-prey relationship. That’s the nature of it. Every time we attempt to evolve beyond that, things get complicated. Or fall apart.”

“Sometime I’ll explain it all to you,” Kate continues. “For now, I think we should go camping and forget about responsibilities for a while.”

“Okay,” Helen says.

Mother and daughter return from the roof to their new apartment where Gabriel and Henry have pitched a tent on the floor and Christopher is making pancakes while Clarence naps in a patch of sun.