Revolving Door: Volume 2
Forged in Fire - III
Dorian's story ends as they cross the cusp of their third night in Arkalyk. They part ways at her door. Dinner is already awaiting her inside.
As the food settles in her belly, Marcia feels the weight of her drowsiness inexorably tugging on her eyelids. Once her head sinks into her pillow, she cannot keep her eyes open, and she descends into a benthic slumber.
*
Marcia dreams of a faraway market. The air is hot as sanded wood; it parches her throat. She is in a town like Carthage, dressed in desert reds, a silvering of ocean water peeking from between the houses. Nowhere she has been before. But there is something familiar about its scent—the mingling of spices and flowers. Oxen and carts rumble across her path. She wanders, cape trailing behind her, looking for people she knows. The desert sun burns her eyes, hotter than flame.
Then, there is a rattle of stall poles and carts falling, and a chorus of shouts explodes from somewhere out of sight.
From around the corner bursts a bristling pack of wolves. Screaming strangers scatter. Biting back a cry, she leaps and turns on her heel, sprinting back up the way she came.
Her body burns. She pants with the heat and fear. They are already snapping at her heels. Teeth sink into her calf, and suddenly she cannot feel her leg anymore.
*
Marcia wakes, gasping. Her legs are tangled, one cutting off the sensation in the other. Her head spins with fever, and tears spill from her eyes. She reaches for the glass beside her, which still sits half filled.
She drinks solemnly, head against the backboard. Everyone else is asleep. The sounds of their breathing keep her company.
That morning, Marcia’s fever recedes to a less lethal intensity. Near the wound, her leg is still inflamed, but only from her own efforts. She spends a minute with her eyes gently shut, inspecting her body from within, and that is when she finally knows: she has passed the watershed moment, the turning point.
Her blood has learned the nature of the disease, like a spy deducing the key of a cipher. It is only a matter of time before it is overcome. Now, the danger lies in the damage that she has done to herself. She must let her war go; this is enough...
She lifts herself gently onto her arms. A daze colours the world, fogging all its hues in her eyes. But she can move without toppling, and at last, she takes notice of the room.
Everything here is airy and glossy. Glass, once the privilege of the wealthy, films every window, caked in the dust of age. Water comes to the room, and light needs no fire. This is the world that conspired to create Hong Yi’s miracle device. He is of this world, too, the lenses he wears upon his face, and the clothes he has been sharing with her, brighter and darker than dyes in her world can produce.
One by one, her companions awaken to the gentle air. As Hong Yi and Vesper prepare to leave for morning groceries, they call out a greeting as they go. That is when she tells them—
“I’m getting better. Much better. I am sure I will recover now.”
There is a bout of frantic tapping on Hong Yi’s device, then a widening of eyes, a chorus of “good”s—one of the handful of English terms she has learned. “Amazing! You are the first ever to recover unaided,” he attempts to say.
“Quite the achievement—if it meant anything to me.”
Then, stiltedly, Hong Yi answers, “Do you want to join us to go into town?”
“Yes,” Marcia says, in English. Another of the words she knows. They glance at each other and grin, their words rolling over her.
*
Out of that dusty concrete cocoon, Marcia re-emerges into the city of Arkalyk, wearing blue trousers and a deep maroon tunic picked out from Hong Yi’s collection. He grins at her as she shades her eyes from the piercing sun, hair fluttering in the breeze.
She has seen a few cities in her time, and each has been different from all others, ever surprising her with their changing faces. Grey structures line every street, in larger and more regular blocks than the apartments of Constantinople, as if they had sprung forth fully-formed from stone. Yet like the cities she has seen, everything sits upon a net of interlocking roads, and those roads are roamed by roaring wagons full of rock and rubble.
This city, says Hong Yi, will be one of many for them—a single stop on a fateful voyage, perhaps never to be visited again. There is a lightness about the day, as if meant to be forgotten, no great terror hounding her every step. Even Honourless, so often scowling in a corner of the room, is mild as the weather as she walks.
At every storefront, Hong Yi functions seamlessly with his device, speaking with shopkeepers the same way he has done with Marcia. She watches as they come up by a small bakery and now, skipping translation, he queries in the local tongue, pointing at some bread in the display.
They leave with four pastries, patterns scored into the tops. She doesn't remember the last time food tasted so sweet.
Amid their departing merriment, with the bread in her mouth, the exhaustion pounces on her. One road down from the bakery, Marcia loses her footing and sways, only for Hong Yi to catch her by the arm. She clings to stay on her feet. Her head is spinning again.
“Do you return?” he asks, stumbling on the syllables.
“Don't end this trip for my sake,” she answers, though it is clear he did not understand.
“I go with you,” he continues. “Honourless and Vesper do not.”
She nods slowly. “Take me back.”
*
As they backtrack through gray town streets, past red fountains and shuttered shops, Marcia asks a question whose words Hong Yi spends the walk looking up in his dictionary.
Could you teach me compliments in English?
They wander up familiar roads, grayed by dust. By means of that same dictionary, he begins constructing an answer.
“What kinds of compliments?” he asks.
“The kind appropriate to charming.”
By the time he decodes this sentence, they are on the street of their hotel, concrete dressed in rose paint, the sun balmy on his face. He has an inkling as to why she is asking, though he's not about to prod about it. She is still holding his arm, but gently, never resting all her weight upon him.
“Beautiful. Gorgeous. Both relate to appearance,” he reads off of his screen. “Strong. Fortis. Amazing. Mirabile.”
“Beautiful,” Marcia tests the syllables, sounding them out in her own accent. They climb the dim stairs into the hall, all golden wallpaper and irregular carpets. There is a quaintness to how the morning sun filters through the windows and seeps into the rugs.
Seven doors down, they open their own, doorknob wobbling. Light beams in upon the dim, furnished interior in its muted yellows. Marcia settles at once into the cracking beige couch by the doorway, laying one leg then the other on the seat. He starts looking up the words to his next reply.
“Marcia, Rest well. I do not speak well, but…hope words are not needed to tell you I care about you.”
Marcia lays back, eyes meeting his from her recline. “No, you speak very well,” she replies in Latin, a chuckle to her voice, then she lets her head drop to the cushion.
“Only because of this,” he answers, motioning at his device.
But she is already out like a light.
In a new note on his phone, Hong Yi has started jotting down a list of worlds. His was the fifth they found, and Vesper’s was the one before it. Marcia’s is the sixth, and nothing is known about what might be beyond.
For one more night, they withhold from Orobelle the knowledge of Marcia's steady recovery. For predictably, once the duchess is apprised of it in the morning, there is no stemming the tide.
“You will be out by afternoon!” she shouts from the doorway. “Time is running out. We have four more Cores to find!”
The flurry of packing in the room is high-strung, fragments of conversation traded in starts and stops and scribbles. They have only just begun to adjust to these daylight hours, but again it is time to leave them behind.
Are you ready to hop again? Hong Yi asks Honourless.
More than before. We go in turns. Three at a time. Once I know a place or person, it is easier to find it again.
He begins to hand the translation glass back, but she turns the notebook page and continues to write.
I will gather us in Aden. Then I will take a few of us onward. Once we are at the destination, I must study the land. Then I will return for the rest of you.
Marcia asks after her armour, then finds it tucked under her bed. Sword and all, she straps on the leather over Hong Yi’s tee and jeans, and Vesper offers up her backpack space for the rest of her getup. Hong Yi gathers up his belongings from all across the suite, pulling socks out from under the dresser. Honourless shoves her entire wardrobe into a plastic bag. Then, it is time to go.
*
The foyer looks out onto the fountain plaza, and almost no sooner than they roll their luggage into the room does Orobelle begin dictating her plan to Honourless. “You take Hong Yi, Vesper and Marcia first,” she says. “Put them somewhere safe. Then come for us.”
Honourless does not reply, instead ambling towards the trio already gathered loosely into a ring.
Vesper glances at her two companions as each takes one of her hands. Learning to hop universes, she is starting to find, is like acclimatizing to flight, or warming up to life in the army. The outward sensations differ, but at the core the turmoil is the same—of being torn from the world against one’s will.
Honourless closes the gap between Hong Yi and Marcia. Her eyes shift from one to another, gaze setting like cooled steel as they each mirror her resolve back at her. Vesper’s grip tightens. Honourless draws a deep breath.
*
The sky is dark when the four tumble onto the ramparts of a city wall. Vesper crawls to her feet and waits for the spinning to stop. In her periphery, her friends kneel, lie, pant, wheeze with fright.
The lights of Aden are still again, pricking the blue darkness from many watchtowers. The city beneath them lies dim and half asleep, the spires of mosques and the bare roofs of houses rising out of the desert pale. With a drawn out groan and an audible swallow from Honourless, the air pulls taught, and she winks out again, leaving the trio alone.
Marcia has yet to stand. She sits with her head in her lap, clutching about for handhold. Vesper and Hong Yi descend to her side, and they each offer her one shoulder, exchanging glances while they help her up against the hewn stone.
“Are you good?” he asks in Latin, and Marcia shakes her head slowly, letting herself sag against the wall.
Night deepens as they wait, and the stars seem brighter here than anywhere else, bright enough to cast light. In minutes, the space before them ripples yet again to admit Honourless, this time holding a pair of cards.
Springing out of the Ace of Diamonds in a burst of pink light, Orobelle only spares seconds for a headcount. “Take them to the next one. We'll wait for your news,” she says, snatching Dorian out of the woman’s hand.
Grimly Honourless turns to the other three, but Marcia holds up a hand between deep breaths. Her next words come out in a groan.
Leaning towards her, Vesper gives Marcia a squeeze of the shoulder, then takes Hong Yi’s hand, and Honourless’. “Orobelle, you can’t make Marcia go yet. She’s still recovering.”
Orobelle’s face hardens. “She may have a few minutes.”
“And you’ll give Honourless a break too, once she's done with this, yes?”
The duchess frowns. “I am the duchess here. You do not give me orders.”
“I’m making a request. You're welcome to persist with your cruelty if you like.”
“If you think this is cruelty,” she snarls, “then you would not last a second in the Queendom.”
“Well, then it's a good thing we're not in the Queendom.”
At this, Orobelle's face contorts into a scowl so close to crying that for moments, Vesper fears she has crossed an unmarked line.
But she does not see, nor hear, what the duchess has to say thereafter, for Honourless’ grip goes vice-tight, and the roar in her throat engulfs Vesper’s thoughts. Then Orobelle’s face—and all faces—and the stones on which they stand—pull away into some unnameable distance, along with all sound.
The air is static—too much static.
Rubble slumps in teetering mounds around them, lurid beneath a red-grey sky. Among the debris of concrete and glass lie the remnants of a plastic sign whose text Vesper can only just make out as Forever.
The sickness that rises from the pit of her stomach is quickly overtaken by the far more pressing sensation of the air buzzing on her skin. It ripples along her arms like an electric charge, and she squeezes her eyes shut, trying to shrug it off only to feel it return.
“Something's not right,” she mutters, tapping Hong Yi’s arm. The air is frigid, a far cry from that balmy gulf wind. “There’s too much static. I can't explain—it’s like an itch, like—”
“Like…like the air is electrified?” Hong Yi frowns, eyes scanning the desolation around them. “I was afraid you'd say that.” Already he is tugging on Honourless’ arm with one hand, typing a message with another.
She whips the glass from her pocket in the same moment he turns his screen towards her. “Asith!” she shouts. At once she shoves the glass away and snatches them both by the shoulder, and before Vesper can begin to piece together what has happened, she feels the wrenching tug of Honourless’ grip, and then the turning-inward of the world.
When they land, Orobelle begins to scream out a reprimand, until Hong Yi fixes her with a look more severe than any Vesper has seen on his face before.
“I think we landed in a nuclear blast zone,” he says, not a hint of lightness in his voice. “An atomic bomb was dropped there. Or a hydrogen bomb. I don't know.”
The shift in the duchess’ expression is instantaneous. She has wrapped herself in a blue hooded cloak and now tugs it tight around herself, white fingers peeking from its folds. “Honourless, where did you take them?” she snaps.
Honourless utters one sentence, folds her arms and leans on a wall.
The duchess’ icicle-sharp gaze pivots to Hong Yi. “I don't know what a ‘core blast zone’ is. But Honourless claims she took you to the same city as the one where we found you.”
“New York City?” His eyes have gone very wide. “Thats…uh, that doesn't bode well.”
“What does it mean to you?”
Vesper stares listlessly at him, the words going cloudy in her ears as he speaks. “Okay, so…New York City is one of the trade hubs of one of the most militarised nations in my world. There have been pacts against nuclear weapons for decades. Every world power recognised the danger—bombs that levelled cities, killed tens of thousands, and poisoned the residents for years afterwards—that fun stuff. The country where NYC is located was one of the frontrunners of those peace treaties.
“If NYC was bombed, it means that in this world, the pacts must have failed. There’s no knowing what other places have been destroyed. We…have to tread carefully. The next world could be a hellscape. And any nuclear blast site, anywhere with active radiation…could kill or seriously harm us if we stay too long.”
*
“An atomic bomb?” Vesper breathes as they begin to regroup from the disarray. “Do they…build one? In the future?”
To this, Hong Yi spends a minute gaping wordlessly. “Has your world not seen it? They dropped the first bomb in 1945. August.”
She stares back. “No. It didn't happen. It’s already September. The war is almost over. No one believes we will see it in our lifetimes. What do you mean…they poison the land?”
Hong Yi draws a long breath. “Radiation. Nuclear bombs leave behind unstable particles that release emissions as they decay. Emissions like—like sunlight but much stronger. They linger and continue to irradiate living things in the vicinity for years afterwards. Burns, cancer, mutations…there's a reason only two have ever been dropped. They never used nuclear weapons in war again. In my world.”
“How many people did they kill?”
“Tens of thousands on first impact. Tens of thousands after. Some say a hundred thousand in total. It was the sort of singularly horrific event that changed the world for good…” He sighs. “Sorry, you're a soldier, you’ve probably thought about this more than I have.”
It takes Vesper almost a minute to realise her view of the city wall is lost behind the haze of images of collapsing buildings and fields of corpses, and an ache squeezing her heart…
She blinks twice. She sees Hong Yi and everyone else staring at her. She sees the ground.
Her eyes unfocus again, and she snatches Hong Yi’s shoulder, leaning against him.
“Holy shit. You okay?”
She shakes her head and rubs her eyes. “I…think so.