John Hawks - The Traveler

Then time began moving again and the sensation disappeared. Only a few seconds had gone by, but it felt like a glimpse of eternity. Gabriel turned and ran down the tunnel. “Sophia!” he shouted. “Sophia!” His voice echoed off the concrete walls.

She was still in the control room, writing in her leather notebook. “Is there a problem?”

Gabriel stammered as if his tongue didn’t work anymore. “I-I cut the drop with the jade sword.”

“Good. Very good.” She closed the notebook. “You’re making progress.”

“There was something else, but it’s hard to explain. It felt like time slowed down while it happened.”

“You saw this?”

Gabriel looked down at the floor. “I know it sounds crazy.”

“No one can stop time,” Sophia said. “But people can focus their senses far beyond the normal boundaries. It may feel like the world is slowing down, but it’s all going on inside your brain. Your perceptions have been accelerated. Occasionally, great athletes are able to do this. A ball is thrown or kicked through the air and they can see it precisely. Sometimes musicians can hear every instrument in a symphony orchestra at the same moment. It can even happen to ordinary people who meditate or pray.”

“Does it happen to Travelers?”

“Travelers are different from the rest of us because they can learn how to control this kind of intensified perception. It gives them the power to see the world with an immense clarity.” Sophia studied Gabriel’s face as if his eyes could give her an answer. “Can you do that, Gabriel? Can you push a switch in your mind and make the world seem to slow down and stop for a while?”

“No. The whole thing just happened.”

She nodded. “Then we have to keep working.” Sophia picked up her kerosene lantern and began to walk out of the room. “Let’s try the seventeenth path to help your sense of balance and movement. When a Traveler’s body is moving slightly, it helps the Light break free.”

A few minutes later they were standing on a ledge that was built halfway up the sixty-foot silo that had once contained the facility’s radio antenna. A steel girder about three inches wide crossed the length of the silo. Sophia raised her lantern and showed him that it was a thirty-foot drop to a pile of abandoned machinery.

“There’s a penny on the girder, about halfway across. Go pick it up.”

“If I fall, I’m going to break my legs.”

Sophia didn’t seem to be worried. “Yes, you could break your legs. But I think it’s more likely that you’d break both ankles. Of course, if you land on your head, you’ll probably die.” She lowered the lantern and nodded. “Get going.”

Gabriel took a deep breath and stepped sideways on the girder so that his weight was on the arches of his feet. Cautiously, he began to shuffle away from the ledge.

“That’s not right,” Sophia said. “Step with your toes pointed forward.”

“This is safer.”

“No, it isn’t. Your arms should be extended at a ninety-degree angle to the girder. Focus on your breathing, not on your fear.”

Gabriel turned his head to speak to Sophia and lost his balance. He swayed back and forth for a moment then crouched down and grabbed the girder with both hands. Once again, he started to fall until he threw his legs outward and straddled the girder. It took him two minutes to return to the ledge.

“That was pathetic, Gabriel. Try again.”

“No.”

“If you want to be a Traveler-”

“I don’t want to get killed! Stop asking me to do things that you can’t do yourself.”

Sophia set her lantern down on the ledge. Stepping onto the girder like a tightrope walker, she moved quickly to the middle of the girder, bent down, and picked up the penny. The old woman jumped a few feet into the air, turned around completely, and landed on one foot. Quickly, she returned to the ledge and flicked the penny in Gabriel’s direction.

“Get some rest, Gabriel. You’ve been awake much longer than you think.” She picked up her lantern and headed back to the main tunnel. “When I come back down, we’ll try the twenty-seventh path. That one is quite old, thought up in the twelfth century by a German nun named Hildegard of Bingen.”

Furious, Gabriel tossed the penny away and followed her. “How long have I been underground?”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“I’m not worried. I just want to know. How long have I been here and how many more days do I have left?”

“Go to sleep. And don’t forget to dream.”

GABRIEL THOUGHT ABOUT leaving, then decided against it. If he left early, he would have to explain his decision to Maya. If he stayed for a few more days and failed, no one would care what happened to him.

Sleep. Another dream. When Gabriel raised his eyes, he was standing in the courtyard of a large brick building. It appeared to be some kind of monastery or school, but no one was there. Pieces of paper were scattered across the floor and the wind blew them up into the air.

Gabriel turned, stepped through an open doorway, and entered a long corridor with smashed windows on the right side. There were no dead bodies or bloodstains, but he knew immediately that people had been fighting here. Wind pushed through the empty window frames. A sheet of lined notebook paper skittered across the floor. He went to the end of the corridor, turned the corner, and saw a woman with black hair sitting on the floor holding a man in her lap. As he came closer, he saw that it was his own body. His eyes were closed and he didn’t appear to be breathing.

The woman looked up and brushed her long hair away from her face. It was Maya. Her clothes were covered with blood and her broken sword lay on the floor beside her leg. She held his body tightly, rocking back and forth. But the most terrifying thing was that the Harlequin was crying.

GABRIEL WOKE UP in a darkness so absolute that he found it difficult to know if he was dead or alive. “Hello!” he shouted and the sound of his voice echoed off the concrete walls of the room. Something must have happened to the electric cord or the power generator. All the lightbulbs had gone out and he was a captive of the darkness. Trying not to panic, he reached beneath the folding cot and found his lantern and a box of wooden matches. The match flame startled him with its sudden brightness. He lit the wick and the room was filled with light.

As he adjusted the lantern’s glass chimney, he heard a harsh buzzing sound. Gabriel turned slightly to the left just as a rattlesnake rose up two feet away from his leg. Somehow the viper had entered the silo and had been drawn to Gabriel’s warm body. The snake’s tail vibrated quickly and he moved his head back, ready to strike.

Without warning, an enormous king snake came out of the shadows like a straight black line and bit the rattlesnake just behind its head. The two snakes fell together onto the concrete floor as the king snake wrapped its body around its prey.

Gabriel grabbed the lantern and stumbled from the room. The lights were out down the length of the main tunnel and it took him five minutes to find the emergency staircase that led back to the surface. His boots made a hollow thumping sound as he climbed up the stairs to the hatch cover. He reached the landing, pushed hard, and realized that he was locked in.

“Sophia!” he shouted. “Sophia!” But no one answered. Gabriel returned to the main tunnel and stood beside the line of dead lightbulbs. He had failed at all his attempts to become a Traveler. It seemed pointless to continue. If Sophia was going to keep the hatch locked, then he would have to enter the launch silos and find another way out.

Gabriel hurried north down the main tunnel and entered the maze of passageways. The silos were designed to deflect the explosion of flame when the missiles took off and he kept encountering ventilation shafts that went nowhere. Finally he stopped moving and stared at the lantern in his hand. Every few seconds the flame trembled as if touched by a slight breeze. He moved slowly in that direction until he felt cool air flowing down the tunnel. Slipping between a heavy steel door and a bent door frame, he found himself on a platform jutting out of the wall of the center launch silo.