futures where i killed men by the millions
i was
afraid
i was
afraid i would be—
Te’lo’hi broke off.
“That’s your excuse?” Sarah said. “You’re a being of infinite power and you wereafraid?”
Kyla shook her head. “She’s right. It doesn’t matter if you’re afraid. Knowing you could stop evil and sitting on your hands—that’s a kind of evil all on its own. Trust me. I’d know.”
Te’lo’hi tilted his head toward her, looking ready to speak another one of those same dream thoughts into her head, but a man’s voice interrupted him. A grinding of teeth.
“I agree,” Jack Allen said, and his voice came from right behind Kyla’s ear. “I saw all this power and thought,‘What awaste.’?”
A door opened behind the Attendant. There was no other way to describe it. A wooden door, like all the doors they’d seen at the Brake Inn Motel, appeared out of nothing—literally from thin air—and swung open to reveal Jack Allen and his gabardine suit and his awful, awful smile.
His teeth had finally cracked from all that grinding. His smile was painted in blood.
The Attendant didn’t realize what was happening until it was over. Jack Allen grabbed her silver hair and pulled back her neck and ran a knife across the veins. Brilliant silver blood jetted from the gash. The woman collapsed with a noise like a dog choking on a bone.
At the same moment, Sarah Powers let out a scream. Kyla saw another open door behind her, another Jack Allen emerge and bury a knife in Sarah’s side.
A door opened behind Te’lo’hi, and Jack Allen emerged and laced his fingers through the boy’s long silver hair and lifted the god-child from the platform. Jack Allen brought his knife to the boy’s throat. He smiled to Kyla. To Ethan. “Last time, I drank just a few strands of hair and look what it did for me. Imagine what will happen when I drink from the source.”
Kyla felt movement behind her and Ethan. She stepped forward, all instinct, and felt something sharp and fast slice through the air. Turning, she saw a pair of Jack Allens, knives at the ready. Not far away, Fernanda threw herself over Adeline as yet another gabardine man emerged from yet another door.
The men were everywhere, appearing all over the platform. There was no escape.
“Why struggle?” said the Jack Allen that held Te’lo’hi in the air. “I will create a new world entirely. I will free us all from pain and doubt. I will create a world full of love unending.”
The blood on Jack Allen’s teeth gleamed. Te’lo’hi was screaming
no!
no!
NO!
Kyla scrambled away from the gabardine men who had appeared behind her and Ethan, but there was nowhere to go: the Jack Allen who had killed the Attendant turned his attention toward them. Sarah Powers fell to the platform as Jack Allen sank his knife into her back.
“I will destroy all that divides and distinguishes,” all of the Jack Allens said, all at once. “I will destroy time and fear and all that controls me. I—”
Which is when Kyla and Ethan, at the same time, seemed to notice something. Their eyes met:Do you hear that?
Kyla did. Te’lo’hi wasn’t saying, “No! No! No!”
He was screaming
NOW!
ETHAN
The chaos stopped. All of it. At once. Just like that.
