The Clock Reaches Zero
“What. Did. You.Do?”
Jo thought the question might have come from Eslar, but all she could really process was the sound of abject horror laced beneath the words.
“N-No. . . We can’t, we—How will we getout? How can we—If we don’t have—We’re t-trapped, we’re—Outside was all w-we h-had, I—” That was most certainly Samson, a dull pull in Jo’s chest letting her knew that he was falling head first into a panic attack. Where she would normally jump to his aid, she remained frozen in place. It was as if, in the first seconds of opening the box, she’d become paralyzed beneath a wave of something her mind, body, and soul couldn’t yet comprehend. All she could do was listen in distant objectivity to the sounds of her team falling apart around her. Blaming her.
“Josephina, no . . .”Snow?
“The hell?” A new voice—Takako? Wayne? Any of them really.
“Finally!Finally!” That word rang loud and clear, a redundancy from only seconds ago, but with more glee, more jubilation. Even if her ears weren’t buzzing with static, even if her heart hadn’t stopped beating to make way for the pulsing waves of the magic in her blood, she’d have known that voice. It was a part of her, after all.
The moment Pan’s enthusiasm registered, so did the feeling coursing through Jo like the devastating latch of a taser to the spine. This was her magic in full, returning to her and clinging with a vice-like grip. She’d known what she was doing, had known what was in the box, but there was no way to prepare for how itfelt.So much more potent than the magic she’d come to call her own, so much more fierce and alive.
Part of her, the part named Josephina, the part that grew up in the Lone Star Republic and started hacking to provide for her family, instantly recoiled from the sensation. It wasn’t hers, this magic—not like her hacking magic had been. It wasn’t what she wanted.
But another part of her, a part whose eyes might be slitted like a cat’s, saw everything unseen, all the little lines that made up the schematics of reality itself. A woman whose hair might glisten in fragmented colors like the iridescence of an oil spill. A woman who had seen the birth of time and the dawn of man with eyes that were her own but not, who had preached oblivion and reaped destruction. . . that part of her wasthirstyfor it. Jo had never felt such a craving, but Destruction had. And it would be so easy to give in. Her eyes landed on Pan for a brief moment. So, so easy to—
No.
No more than a few seconds could have passed; Eslar was still trying to pull Samson out of his panic attack, Takako was staring at the Door like it might be lying, and Wayne stared at Jo with every emotion conceivable but abject concern prevailing. Jo saw each of their faces in half time before finally picking out Snow’s.
She couldn’t take on Oblivion’s power if it meant losing him, if it meant putting everyone in danger.She couldn’t, but now that she’d opened the box, she didn’t know how to make it stop. Snow had said this was the moment she was most vulnerable—as she was absorbing her full power. She couldn’t have imagined him to be so right, but Jo didn’t have a clue how to expedite the process even if she wanted to.
With far, far too much difficulty, Jo opened her mouth, lips working with more energy than she’d ever had to expel in her life—only to have her line of sight broken by a blindingly red, cat-like stare.
Jo gasped against the impact, her back colliding with the splintered Door. Broken edges dug into her spine, the light pouring out around her almost bitingly cold against each piece of bare skin it touched. She could barely breathe beneath the impossible pressure Pan was forcing against her ribcage, and when Pan raised that hand, lifting Jo a good foot off the floor, she stopped being able to breathe at all.
Pan was saying something to her, something to the room at large, but Jo couldn’t hear it, the blood rushing in her ears only adding to the deafening waves of her magic.Theirmagic, Jo couldn’t help but notice, because as Pan loomed below her, the waves of both their magics had begun to coalesce, weaving around them both and inching into the core of it. The magic that had been set free from the box was drawn as much to Pan as it was to her. If it went to Pan, not her, then Pan would no doubt consume her next with easy and careless disregard.
In a panic, Jo’s eyes searched frantically about the room, not quite sure if she was asking for help or begging for them to go, run, find another means of escape somehow. But it would seem that, in the wake of Pan’s attack, they’d momentarily dropped their fear and blame, rushing to her aid without a second’s hesitation.
No! Stop!Jo tried to yell, but her vision was already going hazy with a lack of air. All it took was a single, dismissive wave of Pan’s hand, as if she were shooing them away, and the whole room exploded backwards on a wave of energy. The briefing room table collided violently with the double doors, knocking them clean off their hinges; the rest of the room faring nearly as badly. The only one left standing in the onslaught was Snow, but solely for as long as it took Pan to use that same hand to pin him to the opposite wall, magically chained and out of the way before he had a chance to help.
Jo could do nothing more than play spectator as her magic began to give way to Pan’s and her world fell apart.
“You have no idea,” Pan was speaking to her once more, the first recognizable words she’d been able to hear for what felt like hours. Pan inhaled deeply, and Jo’s stomach churned at the sight of their magic winding together like tendrils of ivy, filling up Pan’s lungs like she was desperate for the smell of them. When she exhaled, bright sparks in an eternity of colors escaped through her clenched teeth. “You haveno ideahow long I’ve been waiting for this moment. Your little ploy with Creation here making me be patient, orderly. You know how much I hate that.”
Pan dug her fingers into Jo’s chest, nails breaking through fabric to skin as if she wasn’t wearing anything at all. The pressure continued to build into something painful, mere fractions away from a proper puncture, and for a maddening second, Jo thought that maybe Pan would rip out her heart. But instead, she just eased in closer, rising up off the ground to meet Jo eye to eye once more. The pressure never eased and Pan appeared not to notice she was levitating, too busy running her lips up Jo’s jaw to her ear on a hungry whisper.
“We will become one, my darling. We will be Oblivion once more and you will remember what it truly means to have power. You were always the immature one—no more of your obstinate, child-like games.”
When Pan’s magic pulsed around them, spinning like a typhoon of overwhelming sensation, Jo didn’t scream. She didn’t have enough air in her lungs to try. There was a darkness from deep, deep within Jo’s magic that was creeping up on her, like an animal stalking its prey. She could sense it on the periphery, the shadows lingering in sinister anticipation, and as much as she tried to fight them, there was no denying how much her own magic craved that release, that embodiment. It was what she was made from, it was what shewas.
In a last-ditch effort, Jo’s eyes darted about the room, taking in the scene before her with a steadily breaking heart.
Wayne lay before the double doors, unconscious, a mildly injured Takako at his side. She wasn’t sure what knocked him out, but it didn’t look fatal. Despite how she cradled Wayne’s head in her lap, Takako stared down the scene before her like a soldier waiting for orders. Jo didn’t have any to give.
Compared to Wayne, Eslar seemed worse for wear, no more than a crumpled heap in Samson’s arms. Enough blood had fallen from whatever head wound he’d suffered that it almost completely obscured his face, dripping onto his clothes and smudging the lengths of Samson’s arms. Jo couldn’t explicitly process what Samson was sobbing into Eslar’s hair, but she could almost make out the words on his trembling lips.
“Don’t leave me, Eslar, please!”
When Jo managed to drag her focus away from the sight, it was to Snow, her own sob heaving at her chest. A sob that lodged itself in her throat at the look of pure fury on Snow’s face. Much like Pan’s, his magic was radiating off him in visible waves, thrumming with the sort of power Jo had only seen from him twice: once in the room where he’d “died,” and the other in a barn in the Lone Star Republic, surrounded by Rangers and guns.
It was a magic that managed to wreak havoc upon the room as much as it filled Jo’s creeping shadows with soothing light. It offered comfort despite the rage marring Snow’s beautiful features. It whispered in her ears, against her skin, almost as clearly as the words Snow mouthed in her direction. Jo had never seen anything so clearly.
“A new age. One more time. Revert us back.”
