“They aren’t written down. But we have a mutual understanding. Like two dogs growling at each other on either side of a fence. As long as we don’t mess with each other, there is peace. But the minute one dog digs a fresh hole and sticks his snout into the other’s territory—well, all bets are off.”
We were out in the alley now, behind the apartments. There wasn’t much here other than dumpsters with green chipped paint and a few discarded, moldering couches.
I saw something there, a bright spot in the alleyway. I figured it was the final gasp of the dying day, a last sunbeam not blocked by trees or buildings. But I was wrong. McKesson headed for the bright spot and I followed. There was something slowly twisting in the alleyway. A shimmer in the air. It affected only a small area this time. It was just a crack.
I realized in wonder that the light I was seeing wasn’t from our own sun. It was from somewhere else. The small, vertical warp in the air had let through light from another time or place—or both.
I paused there, studying it. McKesson stood beside me.
“A second one?” I whispered. “So close?”
“It’s an echo,” he said. “A smaller variety of rip in space. It happens sometimes when they force one through. Have you ever pushed your finger through a sheet of paper? It never makes a perfect hole, you know. There are always splits, folds, and tears.”
I took a step toward it, then another.
“What the hell are you doing?” McKesson said behind me. “Be careful, man. You can’t go stepping out through an echo, they aren’t stable.”
“Does this lead to the home of the Gray Men?” I asked him.
“I don’t know—probably. They are the ones fooling around at the moment.”
I stepped forward again. Three fast steps. I didn’t want to give myself or McKesson time to think.
“What the hell?” shouted McKesson, angry now. “You can’t step out! Get back here or I’ll have to drop you, Draith.”
I looked back over my shoulder. I felt strange. The twisting air around me was hot. It felt like my body was charged with static—as though a rainstorm were blowing up and filling the air with electricity. McKesson was close behind me. He’d followed me to the very border of the anomaly.
“What do you care where I go?” I asked.
“It could be seen as a breach.”
“Unwritten rules again?” I asked. “They seem to break them at will.”
“Our side does too, but I don’t.”
I took a step away from him, and he reached for me. His hand grabbed up a wad of my sweatshirt. In his other hand I saw something that looked like a black, wriggling fish. I figured it was his gun. It was like being at the bottom of a swimming pool and looking up at someone standing on the edge. His image wavered and distorted even at this close range. I could see him, but his face was twisted and almost unrecognizable. His voice was reaching my ears with much less distortion, however. Sights were more disrupted than sounds.
I can be impulsive at times. It’s a personality flaw to which I freely admit, something I figure must have gotten me into a lot of trouble in my hazy past. I also don’t like being grabbed. I didn’t reach for his gun, or my own. I didn’t want to give him a good excuse to shoot me. Instead, I pulled his hand off my shoulder with both of mine.
“Get off me,” I said.
McKesson was much too slow to catch on. As I held his wrist, I pulled off his watch and tossed it into the rip.
When he realized what I’d done, I thought he really was going to shoot me. He did a very good impression of rage. There was a lot of cursing. The gun was in my face, close enough to make out the black circle of the muzzle despite the blurring.
“Settle down,” I said. “All we have to do is step inside, grab it, and bring it back.”
“It doesn’t always work that way, moron,” he said. “I said I was going to blow you away if you didn’t listen. If I do it now and push your sorry sack into this echo, no one will ever know. Do you realize that? There won’t even be any blood.”
“If you come with me instead, we’ll get the watch back together,” I offered.
McKesson hesitated, and then serenaded me with a fresh stream of curses. I peered ahead into the rip. Was the unstable opening getting smaller? It seemed that way to me. I wondered what would happen if this rip between existences closed while I stood halfway in and out of it. I knew it couldn’t be anything good.
“Are we going to go get your watch, or not?” I asked. “I think the echo is getting smaller.”
Instead of answering, he shoved me through ahead of him, with his gun pressed against the back of my head.