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Waylon was stuck.
He eyed the path he would have to take: down twenty concrete steps, across a gravel courtyard, and down a paved road where an intact red jeep waited quietly.
The fog of pre-dawn was beginning to lift. The eastern horizon was the color of burnished orange and cotton-candy purple. Waylon blinked at it as he tried to muster the strength to stand. This was the real world, he told himself. A lifetime of beautiful dawns and cool breezes would await him if he could just get up.
The adrenaline that had kept him going since Gluskin was beginning to dwindle, and with it the wonderful numbness from his injuries. His ankle was on fire- even without putting weight on it, tendrils of red-hot fire shot up to his thigh. Nerve damage, probably. The wound where Blaire had stabbed him bled steadily over the hand he clutched to it. His jumpsuit from his waist to his knee was already soaked in blood. If Waylon squeezed the fabric, he knew it would come away dripping. The thought made him dizzy again. His head felt simultaneously like it was floating and about to explode.
Still, what choice did he have other than to keep going? Freedom was so close. He couldn’t give up now. He had dropped his camcorder somewhere between Blaire stabbing him and the Walrider tearing the man to shreds, but retaining evidence of Murkoff’s evils hardly mattered to him anymore. Waylon wanted to get home. Lisa was waiting for her husband. His kids were waiting for their dad. They were what mattered. It had been monumentally stupid to send that email in the first place, the actions of a man far too confident in his ideals and far too lackadaisical with his safety. Now look at him.
With a grunt, Waylon pushed himself down the first step and gasped when his bad ankle caught on the concrete lip. He dragged himself down another, and then another. His head was spinning so bad that the remaining stairs rose and dipped beneath him like a boat tied off at the dock. Rough weather, he thought to himself nonsensically.
He made it down three more stairs before his breathing bordered on hyperventilation and he had to stop before he passed out. He sucked in air greedily; with every inhale, his chest rattled ominously. Drowning ten feet from shore.
He stared desperately at the red jeep across the lot. His lighthouse. His beacon of hope. A few more seconds of rest, and he would stand up and walk to it. Only a few paces, really- less than a minute of hobbling. Then he could sit down in the driver’s seat and use his good leg to press the pedals. He would drive carefully, since he was dizzy, he would make it down the mountain-
Get to the car , Waylon, he thought. And your life starts again.
.
Miles knew he had died. Honestly, he should have been dead after the Walrider threw him around in the lab, but by some miracle he had kept stumbling along until he was shot god knows how many times by Wernicke’s lackeys, that traitor.
Yet Miles was not dead. He felt- odd. He wiggled his remaining fingers and toes, and frowned and bared his teeth to make sure his face muscles still worked. He felt all of that. He was breathing easier than he had since he walked into the asylum. He should check for a heartbeat, but honestly he wasn’t ready to know that yet.
Because there was something new Miles felt now. A quiet static under his skin, a buzzing that came from somewhere in his skull. A black substance, too solid to be smoke but too transparent to be much else, seemed to seep from his pores. Thick black goop wept from his chest and nose and the stumps on his hands.
The Walrider had found a new ride. Didn’t stop it from tearing the soldiers who had shot Miles to shreds, and also that vengeful executive who had been threatening a patient by the front doors.
Miles still isn’t sure why he did that. There was a space of time after he had been shot that he wasn’t conscious, and the Walrider must have acted on its own. Awake, though, Miles found he had some semblance of control over it. It acted on his impulses, like a freaky new limb. And when he had seen the scene in the foyer, the suited executive snarling over the bloody, cowering patient, Miles had felt rage.
“No one can know!” Suit had spat.
Oh yeah? Miles thought, and the Walrider ripped him inside-out.
Miles had not missed the clear-eyed comprehension in the patient’s eyes as he watched the Walrider tear Blaire up. He had hoped the patient was sane enough to make a break for it, to actually get out and tell the world what he had seen , but minutes had passed and the poor guy had barely made it halfway down the front steps. Miles shifted in the shadows, the monster itching under his skin.
kill/help?, the Walrider whispered in his skull.
Which one? Miles asked.
killhelp
Right. Of course the sentient swarm of nanomachines didn’t know the difference. The thing probably thought it had been doing real great work so far killing everything that moved.
I can handle this, Miles thought at it. He sent a firm mental picture of the swarm hanging out peacefully inside his body and definitely not tearing anybody to shreds.
danger, the Walrider told him.
Miles eyed the little dark-haired patient huddled on the staircase outside, curled into himself and wheezing quietly. Smears of blood led out from behind him, like a twisted version of a slug trail. The guy wasn’t going to get up again if Miles didn’t do something.
The Walrider buzzed angrily in his head about the direction of Miles’ thoughts, but Miles had enough of lurking in the shadows. He didn’t feel quite alive, but oddly enough he still felt something like himself. And god help him, Miles Upshur did not claw his way out of hell for nothing.
With a heavy sigh, he stepped into the rose-light of early dawn.
..
The strange buzzing that had been present in the back of Waylon’s mind since he had undergone the engine suddenly grew louder and he jerked, a fresh wave of adrenaline urging him to flee even though he was no longer physically capable of it.
The Walrider had returned to finish him off.
Desperate, Waylon threw himself forward, succeeding in rolling himself down two more steps. He willed his legs to move and yelled in frustration when only his left one obeyed. It couldn’t end like this. He had not survived for it to end like this. He brought his hand off his wounded side to shove himself along, uncaring of the way blood bubbled up and splattered on the concrete.
The buzzing was a tangible presence behind him, growing steadily closer. Waylon gasped and whined and made a spectacle of himself trying to scramble away, but the heaviness of his own body pinned him to the ground like a stuck pig.
Little pig, little pig, he thought hysterically.
The presence coalesced in the corner of his vision like an eclipse. Waylon squeezed his eyes shut and waited for death, but the shadow stayed quiet and slow, settling itself on the stairs to his left. It was breathing.
Waylon dared to look over at the monster and found a man staring at him.
Waylon stared back. The man had probably looked handsome once, but the place had obviously done a number on him. His dark hair and jacket were matted with blood, splattered across his cheeks and neck and soaked into his jeans. The source of it was obvious; a myriad of bullet-holes were cut into his chest, oozing a black tar-like substance. His skin had an eerie gray pallor and black mist curled around him, settling along the lines of his shoulders almost gently. A funeral shroud.
Still, the man’s dark eyes were steady, and he swept his gaze up and down Waylon’s body, no doubt cataloging the collection of his own wounds. The man’s fingers twitched, like he was stopping himself from reaching out. It was then Waylon noticed that two of his fingers were missing, bone exposed and covered in that same tar goop.
“Who are you?” Waylon croaked. Shivered.
“Miles,” the man said. Paused.
Waylon’s mind was still mostly focused on the red jeep waiting too far away, but the puzzle in front of him was simple enough to solve. Leather jacket and jeans, not a uniform. A new host for the Walrider, something that Murkoff hadn’t found within their walls. The email address Waylon himself had typed in with trembling hands the day before, checking over his shoulder as if his biggest threat would be someone walking in.
“Miles Upshur,” he croaked. “You came.”
Miles’ face went through a range of expressions, none of which Waylon could parse out. He finally settled on something not quite positive enough to be wonder.
“Well shit,” he said. His lips quirked up. “The whistleblower.”
“Waylon Park,” Waylon offered. He watched himself stick his own bloody hand out between them. He stared down at it, unsure why it was there. He felt fuzzy.
Miles broke into a genuine grin and shook his hand. His skin was cold. Waylon could feel the scrape of bone across his knuckle when Miles pulled his hand back. He wondered if he should offer an apology for his mutilated fingers. It seemed easier than apologizing for everything else.
The buzzing of the swarm was angry and intrusive in Waylon’s head, and he squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself to focus. Patterns of colors wheeled into his vision and then burst, leaving behind miniature supernovas that made his head pound.
His ankle pulsed where it had been skewered. Blood was puddling on the ground beneath him and he was dizzy with it. In the two minutes he had been sitting on this step, Waylon realized he had lost the strength to move at all.
Miles was quiet beside him. The nanocloud lifted and fell gently in time with his breathing. It looked strangely natural on him. A kind of acceptance Billy never had the luxury to experience.
“Not sure what to do with this thing,” he finally said. “It feels like I’m carrying around a nuclear bomb.”
“I’m sorry about your fingers,” Waylon blurted.
Miles laughed. The buzzing quieted a bit, like it was responding to a lullaby.
“It’s okay. Really. I’m sorry that I got my ass killed before I could do something useful with all the bullshit I slogged through.”
“You still can,” Waylon said. “Get off this mountain. Publish the evidence, mine and yours.”
Miles shrugged one shoulder, gaze far away.
Acceptance was a funny thing. Waylon’s world remodeled itself. Thoughts of escape and family and future vanished behind a thick veil of resignation. The only reality left for him was here on the steps with the man he had doomed with him. But maybe not yet.
“Somebody has to get off this mountain,” he said. “And we both know it can’ t be me.”
There was no surprise in Miles’ expression, only something flinty that softened as soon as he saw the tears in Waylon’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Waylon whispered. “I tried.”
Miles held his gaze. “Me too.”
Waylon wiped weakly at his cheeks. He wasn’t sure why he was crying now, after everything. He didn’t even feel sad anymore, really, just- numb. Sensation was starting to bleed out of him.
“You saved me,” he mumbled, thinking of Blaire.
“Too late,” Miles said flatly.
“Yeah.”
“Guess we’re even,” Miles grimaced, like the words tasted sour. “Sorry. Shit thing to say. I’m not really mad.”
“It’s really okay if you are,” Waylon said. He felt himself sway, pulled into the black hole that was Miles Upshur. All Waylon’s fault.
Miles pulled him in so that Waylon’s head fell against his shoulder and wrapped his arms around him. He smelled like smoke and dead things, but Waylon was comforted by the steady thrum of the pulse under the man’s jaw. The buzzing of the swarm quieted further, or maybe Waylon’s hearing was finally giving out.
“Nah,” Miles said gently. “It’s a new world now.”
Waylon tried three times to speak before he collected enough spit to move his tongue. His lungs caught and rattled on every inhale.
“You can’t stay up here alone,” he pleaded finally. “Go live, Miles. You don’t belong in this place.”
Miles shook his head, hair tickling Waylon’s eyelashes. “I’m too dangerous. ‘S alright, though. I’ll burn this place to the ground. Murkoff still loses.”
The words were dark and coiled tight, a thread of something Waylon didn’t want to follow. He opted for concern. “Give a dying man a last wish.”
“I died first,” Miles snipped.
“It’s not a-” Waylon broke off to cough. Something warm dribbled down his chin.
Miles tried to laugh. He wiped at Waylon’s face gently. “Save it, Park.”
Waylon’s lips were going numb. He suddenly couldn’t remember which muscles to move to continue speaking. He settled for sort of pressing down on Miles’ knee, feeling the shape of the bone. Still here. Still here.
Miles squeezed him a little tighter in response. He pointed over the trees, out at the eastern horizon.
“Look,” he said.
The pink-purple of early dawn had been replaced by gold. As Waylon watched, vision swimming in and out, orange lines of light burst up like the spokes on a great wheel. The crescent sun rose in increments into the sky. Gold paled to gray, and then finally, finally, to blue.
Too weak to even squint, Waylon took in the full force of the glare of the new day. White light burst across his vision, chasing away everything else.
“Sunrise,” Miles said roughly. “There you go, Park. You lived to see another.”
Waylon did not respond.
...
When Waylon stopped breathing, Miles carried him down the remaining stairs and laid him gently on the grass, the idea of leaving the man’s body touching any part of that asylum unbearable. Only then did Miles unlock the cage in the back of his mind.
dead, the Walrider told him.
“I know.”
why are you upset? cannot hurt us any longer.
“He didn’t hurt me,” Miles growled.
The static whipped violently around him. A lie.
Miles opened his mouth to argue. Instead he screamed. He screamed until his ears popped and then bashed his fist into the rod-iron gate he had slipped through only last night, splitting his knuckles and smearing inky-black blood on the metal.
why are you upset? the Walrider repeated, when the fight had left him.
Miles collapsed on the ground near Waylon’s head. “Just because something hurts us doesn’t mean it should be destroyed.”
murkoff. the engine.
“That’s different.”
The swarm was silent. There was a strange ticking sound in Miles’ skull, like the machine was thinking, or waiting.
fix
“What?”
we will fix it.
“What are you talking about?”
The static rattled his skull. He clutched at his ears and tipped forward into the grass. His limbs jerked sporadically, like a puppet on invisible strings.
Damn it all to hell. This was the end. The Walrider had enough of Miles and his pathetic human thoughts and was taking over his mind for good. He should’ve destroyed them both when he had the chance. He should’ve-
“Stop,” he gasped, fear overriding everything else. “Please. Don’t.”
we will fix, the swarm told him, and then he passed out.
....
The wound was deep, but not mortally so. Waylon kept his hand pressed firmly to his side and hobbled down the stairs as fast as his leg would allow. A fresh wave of energy rose in him when he spied the red jeep parked quietly in front of the gate.
The early morning sun was bold and white and hurt his unadjusted eyes, but Waylon kept his gaze firmly on that car as he limped his way across the gravel lot and through the grass. He scrabbled at the driver’s door and was relieved to find it unlocked.
Only when he had situated himself firmly in the driver’s seat, hands on the wheel, did Waylon allow himself to pause. He looked out at the towering structure of the asylum and could barely believe he had been in there. That he had gotten out. God, he was going to see Lisa again.
The strange buzzing that had been present in the back of his mind since he had undergone the engine suddenly grew louder. Waylon startled and turned the ignition key on instinct, muscles coiled to run, flee, escape.
There, on the front steps of the asylum, a black shadow in the shape of a man stood. Waylon couldn’t see his face, but he knew with certainty he was being watched.
He thought about picking up his camcorder, but he thought better of it. Instead he did something that surprised him. He waved.
The black shadow curled out in tendrils of smoke. The static rattled Waylon’s teeth. He yanked on the gearstick and turned the car around, hissing when the front wheel bumped into the gate. He threw it into reverse and tried again.
The smoke was enveloping the car now. Waylon could barely see. With a cry he scrambled to shove the gearstick back into drive- and then the car shot forward through the gate.
Waylon braced for the impact, but it never came. The Walrider withdrew, and the car lost momentum and settled into a slow roll down the slope of the long driveway. Heart pounding, Waylon glanced in the rearview mirror.
The man was still standing on the stairs. Waylon got a glimpse of him under the swarm- dark hair, bloodstained jacket. Something like a grimace on his face- or maybe a smile.
Then he lifted his hand and waved back.