Zach stood in the graveyard, rain falling earnestly from the sky. He turned his face up to the clouds, letting it wash over him. The water was ice-cold and strangely salty. Why would rain be salty? For a terrifying second, he thought he’d shown weakness again, crying his eyes out. But there was nothing. It was only the rain.

  He looked back in the direction the group and the woman had gone. Mark’s Street stretched on for quite a while, making it seem like a border rather than a street. They’d walked off to the left, heading back to the medical ward, which was to the east of the camp.

  A part of him whispered that he’d be expected to go back as well, to go back to the Store with John, if not for the boy he’d knocked out. But he couldn’t do it. With the locket in hand, something was nagging at him, something Eve had said about the cards.

  He shivered, remembering the accuracy of the Deck. Despite the fear the cards had given him, he couldn’t help but fixate on the experience. The palm Deck was supposed to help you make a decision, help you find what was bothering you. Those had been Eve’s words.

  Whatever those cards were, he couldn’t deny that he had felt something at the sight of them. Something people usually claimed they felt during prayer. If she said the cards could help him make a decision, perhaps they’d help him find what exactly he had to do to get home.

  “I need to read those cards again,” he muttered to himself, speaking through the rain.

  Never mind the fact that he’d remembered a Deck only belonged to one person. Never mind the fact that Deck was currently back in the medical ward. He had to try. And fortunately, Eve had said she had another one back in the apartment.

  Now, if only he could remember the way—

  A carriage came rattling down the street, turning in from Dream Street. There were six enforcers standing in the back, their guns held in front of them, muzzles facing down away from the rain.

  The driver brought the carriage to a stop in front of the building nearest to the park. Clearly on specific orders, the men got off, walking toward the building where someone inside opened the door for them.

  They walked in, one by one, throwing covert glances around, and a few seconds later, six enforcers, all of them different from the ones who’d just gone in, came walking out. On rotation, he realized.

  He searched Oliver’s mind for what this building was, and found that this was the camp’s version of a jail. Not that they’d ever used it, but still. Its mere existence had done enough to keep everyone on their best behavior.

  But they’re clearly using it now.

  Against his better judgment, he walked closer, just five or six steps, before he strained his ears, trying to catch the enforcers’ exchange from this distance.

  He winced.

  The wind instantly got louder. Not only that, but everything that shifted under its touch became agonizingly clearer. Grains of sand grating against one another, fallen leaves scraping across the pavement, the horse snorting and its harness rattling as it shook its head.

  All of this he heard before he even got to the voices. When he finally did, it sounded like they were shouting right into his ear.

  “STILL NOT EATING?!?” one of them asked.

  “B IS. THE OTHER ONE, NOT SO MUCH. SAYS HE WON’T DO A THING UNTIL HE SPEAKS WITH THE HEAD. I THINK WE NEED TO CALL JOHN.”

  Shutting the flow off was more difficult than it had been before. Their words were beating against his eardrums, trying to break through and fill his mind. How had he done it last time?

  “HEY! LOOK OVER THERE! ISN’T THAT JOHN’S KID?!?”

  “WHAT’S HE DOING?!?”

  “YOU THINK HE’S HEARING THE DEMONS?!?”

  The fear in their tones was striking. For what must’ve been the thousandth time, he cursed himself for being such an idiot. Couldn’t he have controlled his reactions better? Everyone would already be talking about his incident with Jonathan and the others. Now this?

  Stupid, foolish idiot!

  “SOMEONE SHOULD PROBABLY GO HELP HIM—!”

  “WHAT IF SOMETHING COMES CRAWLING OUT OF HIM!” That one sounded legitimately afraid for his life.

  Just go! Zach shouted to himself.

  Hands pressed tightly against his ears, he ran across Mark’s Street, back into the residential area. Following the back alleys all the way to the end, where one of them eventually connected to 3rd.

  He paused, leaning against the building.

  In deference to the few people who were walking here and there, umbrellas held overhead, he refrained from blocking his ears. He simply gritted his teeth, making sure to take deep breaths, willing his hearing back to his immediate vicinity.

  When he could finally stand comfortably, a subtle pain nestling deep in both his ears, he looked around, registering the fact that he was standing on 3rd street. If he continued up the street, he’d find the apartment building. Trouble was, the residential area was a great distance from the graveyard.

  The camp was large enough to require wagon transportation. But he’d covered that distance in no more than thirty minutes, max. His memory told him it would take at least an hour and five minutes to cover that distance on foot, maybe just under an hour at a run.

  He’d used that strange speed again. Did that have anything to do with his not being able to control his hearing? Was his body tired, or could he only use one ability within a specific time? As important as those questions seemed, he added them to the list of unanswered questions that was quickly getting longer and longer.

  He needed the Deck. Perhaps he’d get a few answers from it. Or I’m just wasting my time.

  Acting as normally as he could, he started up the street, heading for the apartment building. By this point, the rain had soaked through his clothes. Its salty quality was burning his eyes, but it helped take attention off the pain in his ears. The shivering helped distract from the stares he got, as well.

  Once people realized who he was, they gave him a wide berth. He tried not to think about how things would be once word got out about the altercation with Jonathan. But again, that was a problem for another time.

  He kept his head low, ignoring the eyes, trying his hardest not to strain his ears to make out their mutterings, and finally arrived at the apartment building. As he started up the stairs, he worried that he didn’t have a key until he remembered that no one really locked their doors anymore.

  In a broken world where virtually nothing held any value, what was there to steal?

  Indeed, he found the door unlocked. He let himself in, finally sighing when it closed behind him. His suspicions had been right. The more he lived Oliver’s day-to-day life, the more memories he’d unlock.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “But not the ones I really need.”

  He glanced around, taking in the apartment. The large, black couch with brown blankets on its ends was the first thing that caught his attention. Something pulled him there. Without a second thought, he went over and took a seat, studying the apartment from that angle.

  There was a coffee table in front of the couch, large and built out of many arches that were flattened in the center and left rising around the four edges. A vase filled with small black and beige rocks sat in the middle, surrounded by books and other trinkets.

  He looked up.

  In the corner of the apartment, close to the windows, was a large rectangular mirror draped with small chains. Opposite it, to the right of the room and before the kitchen area, stood an old lamp that memory told him no longer worked.

  Maybe it was all the running and the ear straining, but he suddenly realized he was hungry. Not in the sense that he needed food immediately, but more like it would be good to eat before it became a problem.

  This First String came with a lot of advantages, but he would have to le—

  He looked back at the table, a memory touching the edge of his perception. If he was right, those solid sides gave way to drawers. This one closest to him, didn’t it…?

  He reached forward, pressed against it, and watched as it detached from its latch. Sitting there, at the bottom of the drawer, he found a wooden box, a silver chain with a small silver arrow pendant sitting atop it.

  The Deck.

  He hesitated a moment.

  Decks were personal things, connections formed between one person and one Deck. Oliver’s mind was almost screaming at him for even thinking of touching this, for thinking of invading his mother’s space.

  But I don’t have another choice. Besides, it might not even work.

  Steeling himself against that reluctance, he reached in and picked up the box. Contrary to Oliver’s feeling, his hands didn’t fall off, nor did the roof cave in; no calamity came as punishment for his supposed sin.

  He sighed softly, some tension he hadn’t known he’d been carrying easing away with it. He removed the silver chain. It had the same strange, shiny-dullness as the balls Noah had used during that ritual. But that wasn’t what he was here for.

  Gently setting it aside, he opened the box, looking down on the cards. These were duller than the ones in the hospital. Harder, too. They looked like hard plastic, but when he removed them, they felt as heavy and as hard as steel. Perhaps it was only his imagination, but they felt just as cold, as well.

  “Okay,” he said to himself, shuffling the cards the way Eve had. “What did she ask? Constellation or palms?”

  Palms. Or should I say it out loud? “Palms.”

  Just the way he’d seen it done, he started from the top of the Deck, removing one card at a time and setting it face down in a growing circle. The palm cards were red slashed with yellow, the constellations black slashed with blue.

  He made sure to read the back of each card before he set them down, continuing on until he found a legible card.

  Choices, Actions, Consequences.

  A palm card this time. Perfect. If I found a card to read, does that mean it’s working?

  There was really only one way to find out. He set the Deck down right in the middle of the circle, placing the card he’d been able to read face-up on top.

  The red on this side of the card was stronger, the yellow slashes thinner and appearing only at the bottom and top of the card. That left its center predominantly red, where two black eyes sat, staring out of a large serpent split quadripartitely.

  There were exactly seven lines crossing through the eyes, each at a different angle.

  Immediately, it felt like he was hard at work, studying for some test. Like knowledge was trying to impress itself into his mind. Without realizing, he reached out with his hand, gently touching the card.

  Everything went dark.

  Chains rattled from somewhere. Everywhere.

  A wind carrying the scent of death blew across him, almost searing his nose right off. He stumbled back and heard the crunch of the dead grass underfoot. When he looked, he found he was standing on a burned field. Chains swung down from high in the sky, tattered fur pellets caught in between the links.

  The black, sunless sky stretched above, an impossible light somehow illuminating all. Forming a circle around him, twenty-eight metal cards rotated around him at eye level. They were all blank.

  His eyes went to the portals in the sky, hundreds of them glowing with their own white-blue light, the chains stretching down from each one. Howls came from somewhere far off, and remembering the creatures he’d seen last time, he had no desire to see them now.

  He stepped forward, and the cards moved with him. Were these the same cards as the ones in the Deck? There was no writing on any of them, no strange icons, either. And yet... He could almost sense something emanating from them.

  Acting on a hunch, he cleared the panic from his mind, the thoughts of the creatures, of the man he’d seen last time, of the voice he’d heard last time—he got rid of all of it. The only thing he thought of was going home. He turned on the spot, studying each blank card until one of them called to him, the way the script on the Deck became legible once you found your card.

  He turned and turned until he found that card. The twenty-first one in the lineup. Only there was no script, no icon. There was nothing special about this card beyond a feeling. Still, he reached out, and the second his finger grazed that smooth metal, a blinding pain shot up his arm.

  He could track the pain all the way as it went up to his neck, and reached his mind. He winced, falling down. He was dimly aware of the seizures that rocked him, as though he were watching from outside his own body as he did so.

  A string of numbers flashed by before his eyes, then letters, then strange symbols, all of them feeling like they should make sense, but not making any sense whatsoever. It felt as if someone slid the sharp point of a knife under his skin and was peeling away as if skinning an apple.

  Those howls sounded again, much closer this time. He could feel the ground shake as the pack made their way over to where he stood. He had to get up before they tore him limb from limb.

  The seizures were passing. Small spasms jerked his body now, an aftershock from all those currents moving through his body. His breathing came quick and shallow as he tried to focus on his surroundings. The cards were still floating.

  “What the hell is happening?” he asked angrily. “I swear, it’s one thing after the other.”

  Zach thought it was a good thing Oliver wasn’t there. With everything that had happened, he might’ve killed him with his own two hands. There was no beastly stirring motivating those thoughts. No, that was pure frustration.

  Why couldn’t he get a simple answer? A simple solution? Why couldn’t things be easy?

  The ground before his eyes raised a bit, a black book growing out of the charred soil. At least, it had a book’s shape. There were no pages, no cover, no spine, no title that he could see, but he could tell it was supposed to be a book. Thick black smoke drifted off of it, falling like a fountain. When he reached for it, his hands passed right through.

  More mystery! I swear—

  Another shape came rising out of the ground.

  It was another book, but this one was far more detailed, at least mentally. It was still only an idea of a book, but one far more concrete. When he reached for this one, he found that not only could he touch it, he could pick it up! Though it felt like picking up air.

  Images flickered through his mind, images of Oliver’s room. He was standing there, just where he’d been standing this morning. He looked around, everything almost astonishingly detailed. That same black smoke in his hands seemed to leak from the bed. Rather, from within the bed.

  “It’s like a tracking system,” he said out loud.

  He didn’t know what the book was or how it had gotten into Oliver’s room, but he knew, back in the real world, he’d find it there. The room disappeared. No sound, no visual warning. It was there one second, and the next, it wasn’t.

  He found himself still on the burned ground. The spasms had stopped. He pushed himself to his feet, wiping the sweat from his nose. That’s not sweat, it’s blood! The back of his hand was smeared red.

  In the near distance—too near, as far as he was concerned—he could see the pack of strange creatures coming his way. The space between them was filled with their guttural snarls, snarls that sounded wrong to his ears.

  He shivered against that wrongness, thinking of running away. The cards spun once at a blurring speed, then this strange world that was Severity started disappearing. He couldn’t help but notice the chains swaying crazily, that thunder from the last time echoing down from above.

  I WILL HAVE YOU BEFORE YOU ASCEND

  The voice sounded angry. But before Zach could dwell on it, he blinked the apartment back into focus. There was a towel covered with bloody smears sitting on his lap.

  “I don’t care what she does with it,” Eve was saying in hushed tones. “I only read it because she forced me to listen as she read it.”

  “I just don’t understand why you won’t tell me about it,” John said tiredly.

  “John, Oliver might be sick, and that’s what you’re worried about. I don’t want anything to do with them. You know that. I—Ol!”

  They both came running from the kitchen area when they noticed Zach was sitting up, still wiping small traces of blood from his nose. She had the Deck back in the wooden box in her hands.

  “Oliver, what could’ve possibly possessed you to pick up my Deck?” she asked, a near-horror-struck look on her face.

  Oh, that’s just great!

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