“Drain him,” said the Professor, but Joaquim hesitated.
“It would take me a while. He’s strong.”
“Then bring him. The girl, too.” He was still talking to Joaquim, but the clones moved forward to grab us. I fought to hold on to Acacia, but she was still unresponsive and there were far more of them than there were of me. Joaquim grinned at me.
“You and me, Joey. The heralds of FrostNight.”
One of the clones clubbed me in the back of the head, hard, and the next few moments were a haze of hallways and doors while I tried stubbornly to hold on to consciousness. Joaquim’s words rattled around in my head as the clones dragged me through the halls—FrostNight. I’d heard that before. I’d heard someone say that before…
FrostNight comes.
The words had been whispered, pained. There had been blood on the rocky ground. He’d looked at me, and warned me, and died.
Jay…
Despite my attempts to stay conscious, I must have passed out for a few moments at least. When my vision cleared I was in some sort of cage. I didn’t see Acacia anywhere, but Joaquim was next to me.
No—it wasn’t a cage, exactly. I was surrounded by metal, but it was more than that. It was mesh, see-through, but vaguely human shaped. There was a rounded part for my head and room for my arms, which were stretched out to either side of me. My hands were trapped, my wrists stuck through padded restraints that felt like the cuffs used to check blood pressure. They were around my ankles, too, and hundreds of little multicolored wires were twined and twisted out of them. There were straps about my chest, waist, and legs. I could turn my head but not move my body.
Thin, prickly fingers of dread began to clutch at my stomach. This was it. I was strapped in so tightly I couldn’t even feel my fingers, InterWorld was most likely on full lockdown due to Joaquim’s slow drain, Hue was still only a dim presence in the back of my mind, and Acacia was unconscious or worse. I was trapped by Binary, and nothing short of a miracle was going to get me out.
Joaquim was strapped in as well, and didn’t seem at all concerned. “You made this possible, you know,” he said, as though I were helping him complete his life’s work. Which, however unwilling I was, may have been the case. “It would have taken me days, weeks even, to pull all the power from InterWorld. I couldn’t do it all at once. There are too many of us. Slowly, yes…But you, Joey. You’re one of the most powerful Walkers they have. Without you, this would have taken months…”
I wanted to ask what this was. I wanted to ask why he was strapped in, too. I wanted to ask what this was going to do, or why he was so happy about it. I wanted to panic, and struggle, and yell. Instead, I mumbled “Where’s Acacia?” and made a serious attempt at lifting my head to look around.
“Your concern is sweet, it really is. I hope I feel love, someday. I did get along well with Joliette. I’m glad she survived the rockslide. I’d hoped everyone would…but it had to be done.”
It had to be done. Of course Joaquim had caused the rockslide. He’d needed the base on lockdown, needed everyone inside so he could drain as many of them as possible. Everything clicked, now; the fog hanging over Base Town after Jerzy’s death, what I’d assumed to be depression…it had been a tangible thing. Jo’s lethargy after she and Joaquim had made it back to Base—that’s how he’d even gotten the InterWorld formula in the first place, made it through the In-Between. He’d stolen her energy, and her memories, and Walked right into InterWorld like some kind of goddamned hero.
And we’d let him.
As near to panic as I’d been a moment ago, a sudden calm settled over me now. I ignored him, turning my attention to getting feeling back into my extremities. I’d need to have full use of all my limbs if I was going to attempt a daring escape, after all—not that I had a plan, mind you. I had nothing but the burning need to not let the traitor who shared my face get away with Jerzy’s death.
I flexed the fingers of my right hand, then my left, finally managing to work some blood back into them. That was good, but it was accompanied by a severe case of pins and needles; I let that sort itself out while I tried to discern exactly what kind of contraption I was in.
The wires went from me and Joaquim down into a bundle on the ground and out past our feet. They snaked across the floor—which seemed to have a bunch of symbols etched into it, arcane-looking things that were straight out of a B-movie cult flick—and split off into different directions, weaving and interlocking to create a five-pointed star. Just above the star was the oddest machine I’d ever seen.
I recognized some of it, thanks to my studies at InterWorld—transmitters, receptors, generators, amplifiers—they were all jumbled together surrounding something that looked almost like a giant Tesla coil. Looking vastly out of place amid all the machinery were figures in dark robes, nothing but blackness visible beneath their hoods. There were thirteen of them, just standing there, all in a circle around the coil.
No, thank you. Whatever this was, I didn’t want any part of it.
Now that I was a little calmer, I closed my eyes, casting about for a portal…and immediately wrenched my awareness back to the safety of my own mind. There were things out there, things that were aware of me, that knew I was trying to Walk…. It felt like I’d passed through a spiderweb or gotten too close to a live wire. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
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“It should be soon,” Joaquim murmured, and I finally turned my attention back to him.
“Okay, I’ll bite. FrostNight—what is it? I was warned about it, by—by an old friend,” I said quickly, but Joaquim gave a sympathetic nod.
“Jay,” he said, and I realized the calm anger that had settled over me before was nothing compared to what I was feeling now. The thought of Jay’s spirit being used for something like this…But, no, these were only the souls of captured Walkers. I had brought Jay’s body back to InterWorld, seen him off, spoken with his spirit. Jay was safe, and so was Jerzy.
Joaquim confirmed this a second later, though I was still too angry to care much for the understanding in his voice. “I have some of your memories, too, Joey. Only a few—we weren’t linked long enough for me to get much more.”
“Well, I don’t have yours,” I snapped. “So enlighten me. What’s FrostNight?”
“The revolution that will reshape everything,” Joaquim said simply, with the kind of rapture you find only among zealots and fools.
“Okay,” I prompted when he ceased to say more, keeping his attention on my face while I wiggled my right arm back and forth. My wrist was beginning to chafe, but I thought it was starting to come free a little. Maybe. I hoped.