Mister Impossible (Dreamer Trilogy #2)(59)

They turned to look.

The car’s rear door hung open. Bryde had made it out, but not by much. He was sort of crouched in the diffuse shadow of the open car door. Sort of standing. His body was curved in a question mark. It quivered. His fingers were cages over his ears.

He was screaming.

Or at least he looked like he was screaming. With his hands over his ears he screamed and screamed again, but without sound. It was all the agony of a howl without any of the noise, which somehow made it worse. It was like the sound of the server farm and the scream were a thing happening to Bryde; it made him a different person. Somehow less present. Projected in from a different location.

They did not need to be told that it was hurting him.

What do you hear?

Ronan seemed shaken, too, but it was with a voice full of bravado that he turned his face away from Bryde and said, “It’s up to us, then.”

“We can just go,” Hennessy said. “Leave this untouched. Tell him we did it. Maybe he won’t notice.”

Ronan gave her a look. “The car. Let’s drive Burrito through.”

“Through that glass and stuff? Is it tough enough for that?”

“Please.” Ronan gave her another look. “Are you coming or are you waiting here?”

“Are we taking him?”

They looked back at Bryde. It was strange to see him still pinned in place. Was it possible for a sound to kill someone? Was it possible for something to kill Bryde? Older than he imagines, she remembered him saying.

She told Ronan, “Go on, I’ll watch. I’ll give you a score. Perfect ten is the car comes out without a scratch. Nine if you bust a mirror off. It goes down from there. One is if we have to walk through that town, which, I have to say, reminds me of Pennsylvania.”

“We’re in Pennsylvania,” Ronan said.

“That settles it.”

Hennessy stood in the parking lot as Ronan drove the car away from them both, expertly spinning it to the left to slam the still-open back door shut. The car instantly became hard to see, even though she could hear the pounding bass of music from within it. It was not enough to drown out the complex’s sound, which was still everywhere. Inside her. Inescapable. Unrelenting. It required no human hands to do its work; it was in there powering that sound all by itself, working away at Bryde without feeling or pause.

Humans were so good at pollution. The best.

Suddenly, a massive hole appeared in the dark glass lobby doors of the closest building. Ronan had driven right in. For just a moment, Burrito was visible in the reflection of the remaining glass, and then it winked out of view. Crashing sounded from within the building.

Minutes passed.

Although it was impossible to see what was happening, it was nonetheless obvious that something was happening, because the terrible sound had gotten a little quieter, replaced now by security alarms. Bryde had stopped screaming and instead was simply hunched, eyes closed in pain, hands still over ears.

Hennessy missed the moment of Burrito emerging from the first building, but she saw the moment it crashed into the second. That shivering glass, that brief reflection. Again, as Ronan did his work inside the building, the terrible sound went down another notch, replaced by yet more ordinary howling of alarms. She wondered if they were hooked up to anything. She wondered if she’d need to bedazzle any security forces with one of Bryde’s silver orbs. She examined her conscience to see if she would be willing to rummage in Bryde’s jacket to retrieve one of the orbs while he stood there. Hennessy ordinarily had no problem violating people’s personal space, but with Bryde, it felt wrong. This, she thought, was probably related to Bryde’s secrets.

By the time Ronan and Burrito crashed into the third building, Bryde had lowered his hands from his ears and simply stood, staring dead-eyed and haggard off into the distance.

Then the terrible sound was gone and so were the alarms, so Ronan must have destroyed those, too. There was only the sound of an unmanned business park several miles away from an ugly town. Distant trucks. Faraway heating and air-conditioning units. Tractors and birds.

This time the ley’s surge was so powerful that it nearly knocked Hennessy right off her feet.

It was less that she was physically struck and more like the ground beneath her feet suddenly seemed unimportant. She was a part of a huge, ancient thing that was slowly stretching, slowly coming back to life, and she suddenly thought she understood in a very real way why the Moderators were doing everything in their power to catch them.

Bryde looked nearly like himself as the sound of Burrito’s engine drew near. The car was still hard to see, but Hennessy guessed that Ronan hadn’t lost a mirror. Burrito was strong. Ronan was strong. Hennessy was strong. They were all very, very strong.

And getting stronger all the time.

The ley line was singing through her even louder than that server farm had, only it was worse, because she knew this feeling meant she could manifest so, so much of the Lace.

Bryde said, in a low voice, “Have you guessed my secret, Hennessy?”

Hennessy studied Bryde. Again, she thought about how unusual a person he was. He was a little like the car, hard to look at. Hard to see. Or maybe she was just thinking that now that she’d seen him screaming, it was hard to look at him the same way. She said, “Is this a game?”

He closed his eyes. He was still hurting a little, she could tell. In a stiff voice, he said, “It’s all a big game. We’re pieces.” Then he opened his eyes again. “You asked for a rest. We are nearly to the end.”