Beyond World's End Read online

  She might still have been in the shower if the woman hadn't told her to come out. When she had, she'd found her clothing was gone, and she'd been given a set of blue surgical scrubs to wear, and a pair of soft slippers for her feet. The connection between these clothes and those given to prison inmates did not escape her.

  "Where am I? Can you tell me that? I know this isn't the Tombs4 . . . I need to get out of here. I promise I won't cause any trouble."

  But the woman had only stared at her with hard-eyed pity, and refused to answer any of her questions.

  After her shower was over, Ellie was taken down a long white corridor to yet a third cell. It was an improvement on the first two: it had a fold-out table, a chair bolted to the floor, a bunk, and a sink and toilet, like an upscale designer version of a prison cell. There were cameras in all four corners of the ceiling, and an overhead fluorescent light protected by a metal grid. The room had no windows, and she heard the heavy sound of multiple locks being thrown as the door closed behind the guard.

  That was when she really began to be afraid. Because this place was like a prison, but it wasn't a real, official prison. And that meant that the people running it could just make people . . .

  Disappear.

  After awhile—not more than an hour, Ellie thought—an Indian man in a white lab coat came in, accompanied by another guard and a trolley full of medical equipment.

  "Where am I?" she'd asked them, hating the sound of terror she heard in her own voice. "I know this is . . . could you just tell me what you want? Please?"

  "If you'll just cooperate, I'm sure all your questions will be answered later. This is just a routine medical examination, Ellie. We want to know how you're doing," the doctor answered. His voice was soothing, professional, but Ellie had taken a look at the sleepy-eyed guard standing behind the man in white and stopped asking. The guard was a tall bronze-skinned man, in the same black uniform the guard who had taken her to the shower had worn. The nametag on his shirt said ELKANAH—a Biblical name, a good name, but she didn't think Elkanah was a good man. He had a full equipment belt—nightstick, walkie-talkie, gun, pepper spray, handcuffs—and there was something about him that made Ellie submit to the doctor's examination in passive silence. It had been very thorough and puzzling to her, though she was drearily familiar with medical procedures from the time she'd started getting sick. The doctor removed the two silver disks—spraying the places they were stuck to her with something very cold first—and somehow that frightened her even more, as if she'd suddenly lost whatever value she might possess in these strangers' eyes.

  Once the doctor was finished—he'd taken blood samples, hooked her up to an EEG and an EKG, and a few other things—he let her dress again.

  "Someone will feed you soon."

  The words were meant to be kindly, she knew. He hadn't had to say anything, after all. But they'd only made her feel even more like an animal in a cage. She hadn't been able to look at him when he left.

  In a few minutes, another of the hard-faced guards had brought her a sandwich and coffee, obviously from a local deli. She'd taken one sip of the creamed and sweetened coffee but found it gaggingly bitter and poured it into the sink, using the cup for water instead. She'd thought she was too frightened to eat, but instead she was ravenous, finishing the sandwich in only a few bites and wishing there were more.

  Then all there was to do was pray, huddled up on her bunk with the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, hoping against hope that what she feared so much wasn't the truth.

  * * *

  The sound of her cell door opening jarred Ellie awake—somehow, despite everything, she'd fallen asleep. What she saw in the doorway made her cringe back against the far wall. Elkanah was back, this time with a white guard who looked just as intimidating. They were wheeling a hospital gurney with them. Four thick leather straps were laid loosely across it.

  "Please . . ." she heard herself whimper.

  "Get on the table." The white guard spoke. His voice was harsh and indifferent. Ellie shook her head, too frightened by the sight of the straps to comply. "Do it," he said, a thread of irritation coloring his voice.

  "Hey, Angel. You gotta understand people's limitations," Elkanah said. "Now, Miss," he went on, speaking to Ellie for the first time. "Nobody's going to hurt you. We have to take you somewhere. You have to get up here on this gurney. Can you do that?"

  To Ellie's horror, she began to weep. She shook her head, trying to explain how afraid she was, how unfair it was that this should happen now, just when a miracle had turned her life around—had given her a life instead of the death she had expected.

  Elkanah took no notice of her tears as he approached her. He pulled her gently to her feet and removed the blanket from her shoulders, then led her over to the gurney. Before she could react, he had scooped her up in his arms and laid her down on it, and the man he'd called Angel was buckling the straps across her legs.

  She began hopelessly to struggle, but Elkanah held her shoulders down and stared into her eyes. "There is no point to this," he said firmly. "Do you understand?"

  She'd turned her head away then, giving up, letting them do what they would. Uncontrollable shudders racked her as all four straps were buckled tight. The leather creaked as she breathed. She knew better than to ask for mercy. The streets had taught her that much.

  Once she was strapped down, the two men wheeled her quickly through a disorienting series of corridors, until she arrived at a brightly-lit room that smelled of chill and disinfectant. There were two people there waiting for her.

  One was a white man in his forties. He wore an expensive three-piece grey suit and looked to Ellie like a lawyer, one of those irritable important people who had inhabited the fringes of her world in the days when she'd been a good citizen. He was frightening, but his companion scared her even more—a short dumpy woman with mouse-colored hair wearing a rumpled lab coat, sneakers, and jeans. She had the pasty complexion of someone who spent all their time locked away from the sun. The woman's eyes were the flat pale blue of the winter sky, and there was no humanity in them.

  "Well, this is an improvement over chimps," the man in the suit said. His companion smiled thinly and ignored him.

  "Hello, Ellie," she said. "I'm Jeanette Campbell. Do you know why you're here?"

  "Oh, for God's sake, Campbell. You don't need to talk to her," the man snarled.

  "Of course I do, Robert. That's the whole point of this, isn't it? Lab rats that can talk? If you want data from her, she's going to need a context."

  Campbell turned back to Ellie, coming closer to the side of the gurney. Elkanah and Angel had backed away like respectful servants, going to stand beside the door.

  "When you were brought in here, you had cancer, and you were addicted to something. What was it?"

  "P-Percodan," Ellie managed to stammer. Her mouth felt dry as salt.

  "Okay. Percodan's a good drug. Highly effective, highly addictive. But you haven't had any in about four days. How do you feel now?"

  "I feel—oh, please, let me go! I haven't done anything!" Ellie pleaded, hating herself for begging when she already knew it would change nothing.

  "But you have done something, Ellie. You've contributed to Science. You see, when you were first brought in, you were given an experimental drug. And now you don't have cancer any more. And you don't need Perc. And we want to know what happened to you. So we're going to give you some more of what we gave you before—intravenously this time. And I want you to tell me everything about what happens to you then."

  "If I— If I do that, will you let me go? I won't tell anybody about this, I promise, oh, just let me go, please, let me out of here and I'll never tell, I swear—"

  "Now, Ellie." Campbell's voice was remote, faintly chiding. "You know we aren't going to let you go. But you don't have any place to go anyway. That's why we picked you. If you cooperate you'll be well treated for the rest of your life. That's more than you could expect on the streets."


  But I'm well now! I have my life back! Helplessly, Ellie began to struggle against the straps. Campbell reached into her pocket and produced a needle and a bottle of milky fluid. She swabbed down Ellie's arm with cool efficiency and began probing for a vein.

  "How do you know you'll get the same effect with an injection?" Robert said.

  "I don't." Campbell sounded almost amused. "What I do know is that this will work faster and more of the drug will reach the brain. And that's sort of the whole point here, wouldn't you say?"

  The needle stabbed into Ellie's arm with a lancing pain that seemed to strike at the roots of her soul. Eyes tight shut, she could only moan in protest as Campbell gently squeezed the plunger home, injecting the drug directly into her bloodstream. She felt a rush of warmth so intense it was as if she'd been lowered into a hot bath, and when she tried to open her eyes again, she couldn't.

  * * *

  Once Ellie passed out from the drug, Jeanette glued contact pads to her temples. Their wires led to an electro-encephalograph—an EEG—and instantly the displays lit up, displaying the rhythms of deepest sleep, a sleep verging on coma.

  "What do we do now?" Robert asked edgily. "Wait six hours for her to wake up?"

  Jeanette leaned back against the counter, watching the green waves of Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta roll across the EEG display behind Ellie's head. Something was happening there, down inside where she couldn't see.

  "It should go faster this time," she said absently. "And I gave her twice the dose. What I want to know is, what's she going to be able to do when she wakes up?"

  Less than fifteen minutes later, Ellie's eyes opened. She stared around herself wildly, as if she'd forgotten where she was.

  "Ellie?" Jeanette leaned over her.

  She saw Ellie's eyes widen, as if she were seeing things no one else could. Jeanette reached out to touch her forehead, and in that moment a pulse—Jeanette had no other word for the sensation—passed between them.

  Jeanette recoiled, and suddenly realized that the nagging headache she'd been fighting since she got up this morning was gone as if it had never existed. "Robert," she said thoughtfully, "come over here. Touch Ellie."

  "Why?" Robert said suspiciously.

  "It's an experiment." Because you've got an ulcer and I want to see what happens.

  He did as he was told, clasping her wrist above the strap, then jerking away as if he'd been burned. "What the hell?"

  "I bet your ulcer isn't bothering you now," Jeanette said sweetly. Robert shot her a narrow look, not pleased.

  "My headache's gone, too. It makes sense. Ellie, what do you feel?"

  "Hurt," the woman moaned, in a tranced petulant voice. "It hurts. I can't let it."

  "First she heals herself. Now she can heal others," Robert said thoughtfully. His eyes were alight with a dangerous fervor. "We have to test this." He turned to the waiting guards. "Go find Dr. Ramchandra. Bring him here."

  * * *

  He could not wake himself up—and worse, he'd lost all control over the dream. Helplessly, Eric's dream self pushed on through the forest, surrounded by slinking red-eyed shapes out of nightmare and the Chaos Lands. Where he was going—and what would happen when he got there—were questions he found himself unable to answer, and that powerlessness fed a sort of angry fear.

  This isn't right. I'm dreaming and I know it. Why can't I wake up?

  At last the unchanging forest of stark bonelike trees began to thin. Eric found himself drifting to a halt at the edge of a clearing. The open space ahead was perfectly round, and the bone trees that circled it gave it the appearance of some sort of temple. The floor of the clearing was carpeted with a silvery moss, as thick and smooth as an expensive carpet, and at one end of the clearing was the first artificial thing Eric had seen in this tulgy wood—the back of an enormous throne, its high back blocking the occupant (if any) from Eric's sight.

  The strange throne was as black as the trees, and seemed at the same time to be both insubstantial and terribly solid, as if perhaps it were forged from something alive that hadn't finished growing yet. Eric knew now that this dream was a message, a warning—but of what? And from whom?

  Or was it a trap that had somehow penetrated Guardian House's defenses instead? The fear he'd begun to feel when he lost control of the dream blossomed into outright panic. As he struggled to wake, the throne began to turn, slowly, so that in moments Eric would be brought face to face with its occupant. Somehow, Eric knew that would be a disaster of an even greater magnitude than his present situation, one that he must avert at all costs.

  With all his strength he called upon the Bardic Gift within him, setting the bright humanity of his music against this ghostly moribund wood of silver and shadows. He built in his mind an image of his own safe bedroom in Guardian House, its walls garlanded with the invisible wards of familiarity and good wishes.

  You have no power over me! I reject you! I dismiss you! Go AWAY!

  It worked.

  Eric struggled upright in his own familiar bed, gasping with relief. Not a trap, not a warning, it had been a particularly vivid nightmare, nothing more after all. He stared around at the walls of the familiar bedroom, imprinting its images on his mind, forcing himself to breathe deeply and slowly, banishing fright. It was still night outside. Despite the fact that he seemed to have spent hours in the dream-wood, he'd probably only been asleep for a few minutes.

  Can't sleep after that. He flung back the covers and swung his legs out over the side of the bed. His feet sank into the fluffy flokati rug and he wriggled his toes appreciatively. He remembered that sometimes in the old days, Bethie'd had nightmares like this (though nothing, a small voice inside told him, could be quite like this), and when she had, they tended to come in chains that destroyed a whole night's sleep. Elizabet had always said that the best thing to do was make a clean break with the dreaming state—get up, move around, have a cup of tea, connect with the waking world—before trying to sleep again.

  Tea sounded like a good idea right now. He wondered if Greystone were still in the living room. Maybe the gargoyle would like a cup as well.

  Eric had left the curtains open when he went to bed, hoping that the morning sun would wake him before he slept the day away. As he headed for the kitchen, he glanced casually back that way, wondering if it was raining outside. There was an odd glow shining in; probably the reflection of one of the skyscrapers off the clouds. . . .

  It wasn't.

  He ran to the window and stared out, unable to believe what he was seeing. New York was gone.

  No, not gone. Worse. Blasted to rubble, the twisted remains of the familiar Upper West Side buildings looking like the Judgment Day aftermath of nuclear war.

  And out of their midst, a glowing tower, impossibly tall, rose in evil triumph over the ruined city. He felt a wrenching shock—

  And then there was brightness, and Eric was struggling against something that wrapped him in inexorable unbreakable bonds. . . .

  Eric awoke again—this time for real. The sun was high in the sky—that was the light—and he was wrapped tightly in the sweat-soaked bedsheets that had wound around him during his nocturnal struggles.

  A dream. It had all been a dream, the weirdwood forest and his first awakening. Still gasping with the dream-induced panic, Eric struggled free of his bedclothes and ran to the window. All was as it should be. Everything was normal—wintery trees and pale December sky. No devastation. No dark elven tower raised by Unseleighe power to rule over what was left of the New York skyline.

  Unsteady with relief, he staggered back to the bed and sat down heavily, waiting for his heartbeat to slow from its frantic racing. The dream and its aftermath of false waking faded, its insistent nightmare reality becoming less urgent by the moment. He was safe. New York was safe.

  But if Toni and the others saw—felt—anything like my dream, no wonder they're all out running around trying to round up the unusual suspects.

  But had they?
Did the dream—vision, premonition, whatever—have anything to do with whatever was alerting the Guardians? Or was it a message meant for him alone?

  Of course, like Freud says, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

  The joke fell flat, even in his own mind. Whatever it was that had happened to him, Eric couldn't afford to just shrug it off. In the world of elven magic that he lived in, such things were never just innocent nighttime fantasies ralphed up by the collective unconscious. They were warnings—even if the warning came muddled and coded in symbols he couldn't decipher just yet.

  He'd have to pass on Dharinel's warning to one of the Guardians as soon as he could, and do his level best to convince the Guardians this was something really serious. Somehow Eric knew that that wasn't going to be a lot of fun.

  * * *

  The trouble was, the employees of Threshold were a generally healthy bunch. All Dr. Ram could come up with to test Ellie on were some mild allergies, a cold, a few strained muscles.

  At Jeanette's insistence, they'd unstrapped Ellie's chest and legs and raised the back of the gurney up into a sitting position: Ellie could hardly escape, and her new powers seemed to have no aggressive capabilities. In the face of human pain—or even mild distress—Ellie could do nothing but react, healing the injured party as quickly as possible. She seemed entirely without the capacity of self-preservation, a totally vulnerable creature.

  It'd be funny if it weren't so flaming annoying. I finally get a lab rat who CAN talk, and she won't say anything! If Ellie Borden had any insight into the process that had gifted her with these powers, she was doing a good job of keeping it to herself. In fact, the second dose of T-Stroke seemed to have reduced her to little more than an animal . . . an animal who could work miracles.

  Robert was insistent that they find something that could really challenge Ellie, and they lucked out with one of the lab techs—Donaldson had spilled industrial solvent all over his arm the previous week. Fortunately he was at his desk, within easy reach, so Jeanette sent the two guards up to escort him down to the Lab. When Dr. Ram unbandaged his arm down there in the lab, the ulcerated skin was purple and weeping, an ugly sight. If Donaldson hadn't been such a Type-A control freak, he'd have been home on medical rest with an injury like that.