“Should’ve thought of that before you made me the living incarnation of language,” he says. “Nothing is ever lost. It just moves into a different tongue. And you? You stopped existing a long time ago. You’re a story without a storyteller. We don’t need you anymore.”
“Boy, you’d best stop right there—”
“You’re not real,” says Roger, and pulls the trigger.
The alchemical shields that should stop the bullet are gone, reduced to fiction and wiped away. There is nothing to interfere with its flight. The sound of the shot is like a sigh.
Blood trickling down from the hole in his forehead, James Reed, son and student and creation of Asphodel Baker, the greatest alchemist of her age, falls, and is still, and all is quiet.
PANTS
Timeline: 16:51 CDT, June 23, 2016 (and on, and on, forever).
They find Erin’s body, but they don’t find her pulse; everything took too long. In the end, they leave her where she lies. This will be her tomb, and there is something so right about the idea that they do not question it. Their clothes are in a room three halls over. The sigils covering their bodies vanish when Roger whispers them away, naming and denying them one by one. Some residue is left behind: they are gilded, but no longer prepared to catch the attention of a universal transfer they want nothing to do with.
Timothy—Tim, as he shyly says he prefers to be called, and of course he does; of course it’s Kim and Tim; when Reed named them, he hid their parallels under the sort of subtlety that has to be learned through experience—was locked in another small room, quite close to the room with their clothing. The locks worked on mathematical principles. Dodger didn’t even have to touch them for them to spring open, ashamed that they even considered keeping her out. Kim is with him now, the two packing their scant belongings and preparing for a life aboveground.
“We have to keep them, you know,” says Roger, giving Dodger a sidelong look, gauging her reaction.
“You always did like taking strays,” she says. She pauses. “Did old Bill . . . ?”
“He survived the earthquake. That cat’s unkillable. Erin put him in the neighbor’s yard before she set the house on fire.”
Dodger snorts. “Wow. The world is so weird sometimes.”
“Tell me about it.”
The four of them seem to be alone in this vast, echoing compound. There were other alchemists here once: that’s plain from the number of labs they find, the number of empty rooms that must have held specimens, just based on their layout and design. Reed may have let them go when he thought he was nearing his goal . . . or there may be a reason that the corn here grows so gloriously green.
Roger and Dodger walk the halls of the place where they were made, hand in hand, looking at everything with silent care. They will not come here again.
They reach the door to Reed’s office. There is nothing else it can be: it is too ornate, too extravagant to belong to anyone else. They stop there for a moment, looking at it gravely.
Roger speaks first. “We could start over.”
“We could.”
“Erin says we’ve done this at least a dozen times, and I know I’ve been here before. So we could start over, finally knowing how to win, and try for an ending that saves her. That saves a lot of people.”
“We could,” Dodger repeats, and lets go of his hand, and reaches for the door. There’s a keycard lock. It’s all just numbers. She looks at it coldly and it flashes green, allowing the door to swing open, revealing the splendor of Reed’s astrolabe. “I want to do a lot of math first. We need a clearer path through this.”
“Of course,” says Roger, and falls silent at the sight of Reed’s lab.
Gold and copper worlds dance, jeweled and filigreed and beautiful. They are spinning in perfect harmony, and for a moment, the sight is enough to take their breath away. They enter the room, walking in opposite directions around the edge, gaping up at the planets as they spin.
It is Dodger who reaches Reed’s desk first, who finds the ledger with the golden orbital spiral stamped on its cover. She opens it, looking at its contents first with curiosity, and then with growing, horrified understanding. “Roger?”
“Huh?” He looks away from the spinning worlds. “What is it?”