Chương 47: Chapter 46: Home

We followed the circuit. The corridors of the facility lit ahead of us as we walked, channel by channel, the light running through the floor and up the walls in long bright arcs. The compound was four wings around a central court, and the circuit ran through all of them. We passed workrooms we hadn't entered — the light went in through the archways and lit the channels on their walls, and I caught glimpses of desks and shelves and instruments I didn't recognize. Some of the corridors branched.

The light took every branch. We followed the main path. We passed through two more wings. The channels grew denser again as we moved inward — away from the outer walls, toward wherever the circuit was going. The whole facility was lit and waiting for the circuit to close. Ella stopped walking. Ahead of us, the corridor ended at a door. It was closed. The first closed door we had seen in the facility. Every other threshold had been an open archway.

This one was a door — heavy, dark stone, set into a frame carved with channels so dense they looked like text. The channels in the floor ran up to it and stopped. The light pooled at the base of the door and went no further. She put her hand on it. The channels on the door frame lit. The door opened inward. The door opened onto the central court. Four channels entered from the cardinal directions. They met in a simple ring that circled the court before spiraling inward toward the center. And, at the center.

A familiar sight. Stone steps. A short flight of stone steps, rising from the floor, stopping just before the point where they should have reached the top. missing the final step. The stair ended in cut stone and open air. I was standing in the place from my dream. Ella was already at the base of the steps, looking at something on the floor beside them. A panel. Stone, waist-height, carved with channels and core-sockets — but the channels trailed off. Half-carved.

The last socket was rough, unpolished, the stone still showing tool marks. Whoever had been building this panel had stopped before they finished. She put her hand on it.

"It's not complete," she said.

"The activation circuit works — the sphere feeds it, the corridors carry it. But the control panel was never finished. It needs an operator. Someone standing here, holding it, keeping the circuit closed." She looked at the unfinished panel. At the tool marks on the last socket.

"They left in a hurry," she said. Then she activated the panel. Just like in my dreams, two beams of light started to form, colliding at the centre. And the portal formed above the steps, hanging in the air the way the rings had hung in the sphere — from nothing — a circle of light. The two beams met at its center. Where they crossed, the air rippled. Slow, concentric, fading to the edge. A doorway. Small enough for one person at a time. Small enough for a line. I knew this, because I had seen it.

Every night of my life. The silhouettes climbing the stairs and disappearing through the gate — bundles, children, elderly, nobody looking back. I stood in the doorway and looked at the gate, and the gate was the thing from my dream, and the steps were the steps from my dream, and I was standing in the place I had been standing in every night since I was old enough to remember. I was standing in my dream. But this time, I was awake.

Ella looked at the gate — the circle of light, the two pale beams, the rippling air. Ella looked at me.

"Arcene?" I couldn't answer. I'd been here before. The gate hung in the air above the unfinished steps. The ripples spread and faded. The corridor behind us was lit all the way back to the sphere. The gate was now open. Today, though, the place was empty. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. The forest was gone. Beyond the circle of light stood a streetlamp. Asphalt. A parked car. A house across the road. My breath caught. Home. I took a breath.

Then another.

"Ella," I said. She didn't look at me. Her hand stayed on the panel. The channels under her palm were bright.

"If I go through," I said.

"You'll be here alone, holding this. For however long it takes me to come back, right?"

"Correct."

"Hours. For you."

"Correct."

"If something goes wrong — if the panel fails, if the circuit breaks —""It won't." Flat. No room for argument.

"Go," she said.

"Hey, Ella? — She looked the other way to avoid my eyes — Thank you." I started to march forward towards the gate not adding a single word. The steps were warm under my boots I continued forward, closing my eyes. Until finally, my foot found air where stone should have been, and for a heartbeat I was falling, and then I wasn't. The circle of light took me. I had been here before. Every night. For years. The silhouettes climbing the stairs. The crying. The forest. The voice behind me. And now I was the silhouette.

The transition wasn't just a sensation. One moment I was on the other side, the next — I was standing on the empty lot The air felt too light. Too empty. Missing something. As though something had been taken out of it. Mana, I supposed. Night. Streetlights. The hole in the ground where my house used to be. The same lot Bill had sent me photos of.

The same lot I'd seen through the gate every night in the dream — except the dream had shown a forest beyond the gate, and now there was only this: asphalt, curb, the house across the street with its porch light on, the telephone wire cutting across the sky. No forest. No trees. Just the lot. I stood at the bottom of the crater. The gate at my back, still open, the circle of light suspended above the unfinished steps and Ella. Breathing at times sixty speed on the other side.

Here, the air smelled like rain on hot asphalt. Like exhaust. Like the city I'd left. My phone buzzed in my pocket. Spam mail. I pulled it up. Signal bars full. 5G. Battery at twelve percent. This was way more sensical here than it was there. I looked for a specific discord contact. Bill Mariano — 47 messages from him, none from me that reached. The list scrolled in front of me. Timestamps spanning the day — starting at 3: 28 AM, the first one, and running through almost every hour since. GIFs.

I had read these before. Some of them. Every reply I'd tried from the island had failed. The spinning wheel. The red exclamation point. They'd become familiar by now. Old enemies, more than old friends. My thumb hovered over the keyboard. I hesitated for a moment, dreading the sight of another failed to send notification. But there was no time to lose, Ella and Yato were waiting on the other side, I had to go back. And there was nothing else to fear. Because I wasn't on the other side anymore. I typed: Hey.

Still alive. Long story. Meet me at the lot. Bring a couple pizza. Also your NAS and — I hesitated. some clothes. women's sizes. M/L. don't ask. thirty minutes? Ah! Yes, also Coffee! Don't forget the coffee please. I hit send. The message went through. No spinning wheel. No red exclamation point. Now I could breathe easy. The street was quiet. A car passed. A dog barked somewhere. The fan of the A/C for the house across the street hummed the way it always had.

It felt unreal to me but on this side it was in fact still summer, the exact same summer as when I left. I through it would be best for me to go back to the other side but immediately my phone started vibrating like a magic wand. All day. He'd been texting all day. Eighteen hours of Bill talking to a wall. He was pissed. DUDE, WTH DUDE!? ARCENE! IF THIS IS A JOKE I'M KILLING YOU WHERE ARE YOU COULD YOU ANSWER YOUR DAMN PHONE AT TIMES!? I'VE BEEN TEXTING YOU ALL DAY WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ARE YOU OKAY THE LOT?

YOU WANT ME TO MEET YOU AT THE LOT? I dropped the pin. My location. The lot at 1428 Saint-Exupéry. BE THERE IN THIRTY I didn't have thirty minutes. For every minute I stood here, an hour passed for Ella. Thirty minutes meant thirty hours. She couldn't hold the panel that long — no one could. Well maybe she could, but that didn't mean I was going to make her do it on purpose. Bill—and probably his GPS—were going to be very confused.

The gate was there — the circle of light suspended above the crater, the unfinished steps visible only from the facility side. I walked backward into it. Ella was exactly where I'd left her. Her hand on the panel. The channels bright. Her breathing steady. She hadn't moved. But the set of her shoulders had changed. The line of her jaw. The way her weight was on her back foot instead of distributed evenly — like someone holding up a piece of furniture that should be on the ground.

She had held the gate opened for me for five hours.

"Ella —""I'm fine."

"Clearly you're not." She didn't look at me.

"Tomorrow," I said.

"We'll come back tomorrow. Bill will drive to the facility. He'll cross with everything. We won't make you hold this alone for more than thirty hours." She nodded. Didn't ask why. Didn't complain. Her thumb moved on the stone. A small adjustment — a channel dimming, another lighting, equalizing a load she'd been balancing by hand for half a day.

"Thirty hours." she said. Not to me. To herself.

"I've done worse."

"When?" She did not answer. The drive back to the village was quiet. The carriage moved on its own. Ella sat with her eyes closed — not sleeping, resting the way she did when she was conserving something. The lines around her eyes were deeper than they'd been that morning. The village. The house. Yato mad on the porch. Ella got out first. Walked to the cat. Crouched. He still pressed into her hand. Even upset he wouldn't refuse headpats.