Genesis. Volume 2

October 6, 1986. Detroit – New York. The bus. Morning. Max took the window seat. The spot had been decided by lot—Arthur drew a short match, Lisa a long one, Emma simply said "I'm in the back" and, as soon as she boarded, stretched out across two seats, tucking her legs up. Jenny sat across the aisle, pressed her temple to the cold glass, and closed her eyes before the driver even shut the door. Everyone was silent. After the factory, words felt superfluous—small, like shards of glass that only cut your tongue. What needed to be said had been said at the motel. What needed to be done had been done. Now all that remained was to simply ride, and that "simply" was the hardest part of all. The bus pulled out of the Detroit terminal at 7:23. The engine hummed low and strained; the floor vibrated underfoot. Max glanced at his new watch—a cheap thing with a plastic strap he'd bought at a kiosk before leaving. The old watch with the Void inside was tucked in Arthur's backpack, wrapped in a sweater. And still Max could hear its ticking—even through the fabric, even across the distance between them. Or maybe he only imagined it. "Can you feel them?" he asked, nodding toward the backpack. Arthur sat beside him. He shrugged, but not convincingly. "Sometimes. Like a second pulse. Like another alarm clock went off inside my wrist." "Is that normal?" "Nothing about what's happening to us is normal." He turned to the window. Max stared out the glass too. Detroit was falling away behind them—gray houses with peeling paint, rusty factory chimneys, boarded-up storefronts with faded signs. A city they'd left with relief. Not because it was bad. Because it was dead and didn't want to come back to life, and being in it meant feeling that death on your skin. Fields stretched past the window—wet, gray, dotted with sparse woodlands where bare branches stood black against the low sky. Rain started an hour after they left. Fine, nasty rain that drummed on the roof, the sound like the patter of a thousand tiny fingers. The wipers squeaked, smearing water across the glass, and that squeak grated on their nerves. "Are you afraid of New York?" Lisa leaned over the back of the seat ahead, her hair brushing Max's shoulder. "No." "You're lying." "I'm afraid," he said more quietly. Lisa nodded, as if that answer satisfied her. She sat back, pulled out her sketchbook, and began to draw. Max couldn't see what, but he could hear the pencil scratching across the paper—quickly, fiercely, with pressure. The lead sometimes crumbled, and she blew the crumbs onto the floor. He closed his eyes. Toledo. A stop. The bus braked at the terminal at half past ten, jolting so hard Max almost cracked his forehead on the seat in front. The driver announced a twenty-minute break. Max got off first—he needed to stretch his numb legs, breathe air that didn't smell of gasoline and other people's sweat. Outside it was damp and chilly, smelling of wet asphalt and fried onions from the diner. The terminal was small, shabby—yellow tiles on the walls, wooden benches with peeling varnish, a single soda machine humming like an angry bumblebee. Emma bought coffee in a paper cup. She took a sip and grimaced. "Swill." "At least it's hot," Arthur said, sipping from his own. "At least." Jenny stood by the schedule board, studying the route, biting her lip. The wind whipped her hair and blew under her jacket. "Another nine hours to New York," she reported. "We'll get there by nightfall." "If we don't break down," Max muttered. "You always expect the worst." "And it always comes." The driver honked—twice, sharply—and the group filed back onto the bus. More passengers had boarded: three new ones, taking seats at the front. Two men in work jackets smelling of diesel, and an elderly woman with a basket covered by a checkered cloth. And one more. Max noticed him immediately—not even with his eyes, but with some internal jolt that made his shoulders tense. The man sat in the middle of the bus, two rows ahead of them. About sixty—sixty-five. Gray hair slicked back, revealing a high forehead. A gray coat—too light for October, unlined, no scarf—but he didn't seem to care. His face was like old wood, carved with deep wrinkles. His eyes were pale, almost transparent, like water in a jar. He wasn't reading. Wasn't looking out the window. Wasn't sleeping. He just sat, hands folded on his knees, palms down, staring straight ahead. "Do you see him?" Max asked quietly. Arthur followed his gaze. "I see him." "He's looking at us." "Everyone looks at passengers. It's not a crime." "Not at the passengers. At us." The man turned his head—slowly, smoothly, as if he'd heard their words through the engine's roar and the hiss of tires. Max met his gaze. One second. Two. The cold didn't come over his skin—it came from inside, under his ribs, like ice water slowly filling a void. It was the same cold he'd felt at the factory when the Void drew close. Only this cold was different—not hungry, but appraising. As if he were being examined, weighed, and judged. The man looked away. Max exhaled, only then realizing he'd been holding his breath. The bus pulled out. The road took them through southern Michigan, then Ohio. Fields gave way to woodlands, woodlands to fields. The rain started and stopped, leaving dirty streaks on the glass through which the world looked blurred and unreal. Max stared out the window, but from the corner of his eye, his peripheral vision kept the man in gray in sight. He didn't move. Didn't take out a book. Didn't ask for water. Didn't walk to the restroom at the back. He just sat, occasionally adjusting his right cuff—not nervously, but mechanically, the way people who wear watches and are used to checking them do. An hour in, Max noticed the tattoo. The man raised his hand to adjust his collar—a casual gesture—and the cuff slid down a centimeter. Black ink flashed beneath. A snake biting its own tail. Ouroboros. Max had read about it in the encyclopedia he'd found in the Brookfield library: eternity, cycle, closed circle, a symbol thousands of years old. "Arthur," he said with just his lips. "I see it." "That's not a coincidence." "It's not a coincidence," Arthur echoed, and his hand instinctively reached for the backpack, where the watch lay. Max pulled out his notebook and jotted quickly, in scrawled handwriting: "Toledo. Man, gray coat. Ouroboros tattoo on right arm. Watching us." He shoved the notebook back into his pocket. "Should we approach him?" asked Lisa, who had also noticed; she'd set down her pencil and now sat upright, taut as a string. "No." Arthur shook his head. "If he wants to say something, he'll say it himself." "And if he doesn't?" "Then it's none of our business." Max disagreed, but didn't argue. Arthur was right about one thing: provoking a stranger who looked at them as if he knew their names was a bad idea. He stared out the window again. Cleveland appeared four hours later. The bus entered the city via a gray overpass, past warehouses with broken windows, past factories no better than Detroit's. Max saw the lake—leaden, cold, merging with the sky on the horizon so that you couldn't tell where the water ended and the clouds began. Gulls cried over the piers, but their cries were inaudible through the engine's noise. The man in gray stood up. Max tensed so hard his shoulders ached. Arthur straightened. Lisa stopped drawing, pencil suspended mid-air. The man walked slowly down the aisle toward the exit. His footsteps were nearly silent—only a faint creak of floorboards under the carpet runner. As he passed their row, he stopped. Just for a second. He turned his head toward Arthur. He smelled of something old—not unpleasant, just old: dry paper, dust, cologne that had gone out of fashion decades ago. "Tell Elias," his voice was dry, with a metallic edge, like an old recording, "the protocol has been breached. The perimeter is being watched." "Who are you?" Arthur leaned forward. The man didn't answer. Instead, he raised his cuff—slowly, letting them see. The ouroboros tattoo stood out clearly: a black snake, ring, scales, an eye with a vertical pupil. "Are you from the Circle?" Lisa leaned over the seat back. "The Circle is not one." The man pulled his cuff back down, the fabric hiding the snake. "Remember that." He walked on. The bus door opened with a hiss, letting in cold air and the smell of the lake—damp, with a hint of seaweed and rust. The man descended the steps onto the sidewalk, raised his coat collar, and dissolved into the gray of Cleveland like a drop of ink in water—first a silhouette, then a shadow, then nothing. The door closed. The bus pulled away. "What the hell?" Max breathed. Arthur was silent, staring at the empty aisle. "Did you write that down?" he asked after a moment. "Yes. 'Protocol breached. Perimeter being watched.' And about the Circle not being one." "Why did he show the tattoo?" "To make us believe him." "Believe what?" Lisa was still sitting, gripping the seat back. "That he's one of us." Jenny hadn't opened her eyes, but her voice was clear. She wasn't sleeping—she'd heard every word. "Or one of them pretending to be one of us." "Like Kane?" Max asked. "Like Kane." Arthur looked at the backpack where the watch with the Void lay. Its ticking seemed louder—or was that his blood pounding in his ears? "Elias said not everyone in the Circle is clean. That there are those who want to use the Feasters for their own purposes." "This one wanted to warn us," Jenny said, finally opening her eyes. "Or confuse us." They fell silent. The bus rolled on, the engine's hum filling the cabin again. Lisa opened her sketchbook, found a blank page, and began drawing from memory. A snake biting its tail. Circle, line, scales—each stroke landed perfectly, as if her hand already knew the way. She shaded the eye especially carefully, and it stared from the paper—cold, alive, appraising. "I'll keep it for Sasha," she said. "Maybe she'll know what it means." "Or Elias." "Or Elias." Max stared silently out the window. Cleveland had disappeared. The fields had returned, but now behind every tree, every oncoming car, every distant shape along the road, he imagined a shadow—a man in a gray coat, or someone else watching the perimeter they knew nothing about. "We're not alone," he said aloud. "We know." Arthur moved the backpack from the floor to his lap, closer to himself. "Someone slipped us the photo. Someone sent the note. Someone got on our bus. Those aren't coincidences." "It's a game." "And we're pawns." "Or queens." Emma hung her head over the back of her seat; her hair fell down like seaweed. "Pawns get eaten first. We're still alive." No one laughed. Late evening. Pennsylvania. It was growing dark outside. The lights of rare towns flickered and died like matches in the wind. Max stopped looking out the window and stared at the back of the seat in front of him. The vinyl was cracked, torn in places—someone had picked at it, leaving jagged holes. He mechanically stuck a finger into one, then pulled it back—inside, it was cold and hard. "Your hands are shaking," Arthur noted without turning his head. "I'm tired." "We're all tired." "I'm more tired than all of you." "Why?" "Because I don't sleep." Max rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. "I didn't sleep at the motel, I didn't sleep on the bus, I didn't sleep in Detroit, I didn't sleep in Brookfield. I think I've forgotten how to sleep." Arthur turned to face him fully. The seat creaked. "Do you want me to keep watch?" "You already are. You're watching everyone." Max looked at his hands—his fingers were indeed trembling, fine and irritating. "It doesn't help." "What does help?" He thought about it. "A knife under the pillow." "You have one." "I always do." Arthur nodded—simply, without extra words, as if that explained everything. "When we get back to Brookfield, I'll ask my father to get you a real doctor. Not a psychiatrist. Someone who understands insomnia." "Do you think it's insomnia?" "I think it's fear. And fear isn't cured with pills." Max wanted to argue, but didn't. Arthur was right, and that only made it worse. He fell silent, staring again at the hole in the seat back. "I need cigarettes," came Emma's voice from the back row. She wasn't sleeping—she'd been listening to their conversation, lying on her back, staring at the ceiling. "You quit," Max said. "I didn't quit. I'm trying." "Don't lie." "Don't you lie either." Max fell silent. Lisa, across the aisle, held out her sketchbook to Emma. "Draw," she said. "What?" "Anything. It helps." Emma took the sketchbook, turned it over in her hands, flipped past several pages of chalk circles and the ouroboros. Then she picked up a pencil and drew a square—perfect, with straight lines, not a single tilt. Inside the square, a dot. "What's that?" Lisa peered over her shoulder. "Us. A dot in a square. Trapped." "Or protected," Lisa said. "Same thing." She handed the sketchbook back and lay down again, arms behind her head. Max closed his eyes. Beneath his lids, circles swam—white chalk lines on gray concrete. He saw them even now, through the fatigue and nervous half-sleep. Circles, horseshoes, intersecting arcs. Protection. A trap. Both at once. "Protocol breached," he repeated to himself, and the words echoed in his head. "The perimeter is being watched." Who's watching? Where is this perimeter? And why hadn't Elias told them anything? He opened his eyes. Arthur was asleep, his head resting on his rolled-up sweater against the window. Jenny stared out at the passing lights—yellow, sparse. Lisa was drawing. Emma lay there, staring at the ceiling. The bus rolled into the night. New York lay ahead. Somewhere out there, in the concrete jungle, beyond bridges and tunnels, the dagger awaited them. The dagger they'd traveled halfway across the country for, not knowing if they'd return. The dagger that could seal the Maestro. The dagger that gave them a chance. A small chance. But there was no other. Max closed his eyes and, for the first time in two days, fell into sleep—heavy, dreamless, like a blackout. Only the ticking of the watch in Arthur's backpack echoed on the edge of his hearing for a long time. When he woke, light blazed beyond the windows—a sea of lights, distant and close, like scattered embers. New York was approaching. The smell of exhaust and river—dampness, machine oil, and something else, electric, like ozone before a storm.