Something happens then. When the red priest forces the cable into the port. Her whole body goes rigid. She sees too much, feels too much. This world and the other one streaming beneath. Double vision. It is as though a garden has suddenly pushed from a graveyard and unfurled all of its black petals. Or a secret library has knocked all of its books off its shelves at once to pages bearing the most gruesome illustrations and incantations. She has accessed the Internet—the Dark Net—and the eye on the screen is somehow peering inside her now, searching its way through every inch of her, looking for the skull.
Every day, these past few years, she wished to see. Now she wishes she could go blind again, go back to the way things were. There is so much about the world better kept in the dark. If she could scream, she would, but her nerves feel out of her control. Her back arches. She nearly bites off her tongue. She can’t tell whether she is hallucinating or not, but high above her she spots a black shape—a crow—its wings beating the air as it circles the chamber and then vanishes through an open door.
And then she hears a voice yell, “Stop!”
The red priest yanks the cord out of her. She feels relieved, yes, but poisoned, mind-raped. She chokes back bile and tries to settle her breathing. To be free of that cable is to be free of a noose. The room reels and then settles, and only then does she see the woman, Sarin.
Everyone stares at her. Her arms are outstretched, and she holds the skull in one hand and a live grenade in the other. Her leather jacket, where it flaps open, reveals a vest of dynamite, red and ribbed like the roof of a mouth.
A man—a small man, no bigger than Hannah, with a shriveled face—approaches her. He speaks in a language Hannah cannot understand, and Sarin responds in kind. Then she spits. The small man looks as though he might lunge for her, but the red priest steadies him with a hand to the shoulder. “You’ve come,” he says. “We hoped you would.”
“Untie the girl.”
“And then you’ll give us the skull?”
“Not until I know she’s safe.”
“Of course.”
The red priest makes a chopping motion with his hand, and the small man pulls a long blade from his belt and slinks toward Hannah. The blade hovers over her as if deciding which part of her to pierce.
“Careful,” Sarin says.
The knife drops and Hannah nearly cries out. But no pain comes, only a tug as he saws through the rope that binds her wrists, her ankles. She opens and closes her hands, flexing some blood back into them. The small man waves to her impatiently. Hannah stands on uncertain legs.
A hound growls when she starts forward. She stumbles over one of the skeletons. The bones clatter with the sound of an autumn forest. She sees the obsidian blade beside it and snatches it up and holds it before her, swinging it one way, then the other, though no one approaches her. They simply watch. The masks move aside, allowing her passage, but one narrow enough that their robes lick her.
Sarin nods to her when she comes near. “You okay?”
“I don’t know if that’s the right word for it.”
“Now,” the red priest says, and extends his hands. His gloves spark with electricity. “The skull.”
Something bites Hannah’s neck. The point of the knife held by the small man. His mouth arranges itself into what must be a smile, showing off corn kernel teeth. She’s surprised by the feeling that overtakes her. Not fear. But the want to drive the obsidian dagger into his face.
“The skull,” the red priest says.
Sarin bobs the hand holding the grenade. “You hurt her, we all get hurt.”
“You let go of the skull and we let go of the girl. It’s as simple as that.”
“Back up,” Sarin says. “Give me room.”
The red priest does as she says, and Sarin keeps her eyes on him when she crouches and deposits the skull on the floor. It thunks the stone heavily like something five times the size. Then she says to the small man, “There’s no need for that anymore.”
The knife point eases from Hannah’s neck, and the small man retreats from her.
Sarin nods toward the doorway and says to Hannah, “Keep going.”
“Where?”
“Away from here. Fast as you can.”
“But what about you?”
“I’ll be right behind you. Just go.”
It should be an easy decision, but something wars inside her. The scared kid wants to run home, lock the door, leap into bed, pull the covers over her head. But another part of her knows she will never feel safe again. No home awaits her. Nothing awaits her. She belongs here, beside Sarin, squaring her shoulders for a fight.
“Go!” Sarin says, this time with enough force to seemingly shake the air and shove Hannah from the chamber, into an unlit tunnel, trading one darkness for another.
?
Hannah doesn’t see the red priest carry the skull to the pentagram and lovingly deposit it there. She doesn’t see the screens on the wall flare with red light. She doesn’t see the masked legion close around Sarin like a knot and wrest the grenade from her hand and the pistols from her holsters. Nor does she hear the red priest say, “Let’s finish what we started so long ago.”
Sarin tries to fight, but there are too many of them, their hands on her, dragging her along like a current of black water. Her wrists are bound. Her body is dropped at the center of the pentagram. Her dynamite vest is torn from her chest and tossed aside. The room pulses red with the light hazing from the screens.
“Why fight?” the priest says. “You must have come here knowing the fate that awaited you. It was either you or the girl after all. We need a worthy sacrifice for a night such as this.”
They waste no time. The small man raises his knife, and the red priest raises his hands in benediction. “With this sundering, I, Alastor, call on the dark. With this blood, I hallow this space. With this sacrifice, I open up the door. And so commences our first day, the Zero Day.”
At that moment every flame in the room dampens. And the air stirs, as if gathering into a wind. There comes a fluttering sound. The hounds growl in response. The masked figures turn and mutter and seem not to know where to look. Then, from the doorway, a steady stream of crows appears. Dozens of them. A hundred, maybe more. All kak-kak-kaking and beating their wings and scratching their claws. They are not alone. The floor darkens and surges as if with their shadows. Rats. A tide of rats flowing forward, scrambling up legs, scratching, and biting. The threat is above and the threat is below.
The red priest ducks down. The small man drops the ceremonial knife and it clatters to the ground, and he stumbles back into the desk and knocks a candle to the floor. A crow roosts on the antler of a mask and clacks its beak into the hollow of an eye. A man races by with a skirt of rats clinging to him.
Through all of this, a black hooded figure pushes toward Sarin. His wart-dappled hands grip her by the shoulders. “Are you all right?” Lump says in a froggy voice, and she says, “Neither of us will be if you don’t hurry.” Beneath his hood she sees his face is a cauliflower mass of growths. He fumbles out a knife and works at her restraints.
But before he can sever them, a hound bounds toward them. Sarin cries out, and he turns and tosses the knife into its breast. It contorts its body in the air, gives a yelp, and falls in a heap with its legs still kicking. Seconds later it is gone from sight, the rats clambering onto it, squealing and feeding.