It was 2 AM, again, and John Merchant was still awake, again.
He was a man fixated, like a moth to a flame. He knew his wife was at home waiting; he knew he hadn't told his son goodnight, but it was impossible to tear his attention away from his discovery - no, his revelation. The man circled the crack again, as he had every night this week, and knelt down. His fingers traced over the cracks, and beneath them -
It was like a siren's song.
Something had changed here. The museum fiasco had been barely a week ago - six days and he'd been studying this for five - and he had never needed to know something the way he ached to understand this. The museum basement looked the same as it had before the exhibit, save for a spilled cup of coffee that had long dried and this long crack in the concrete, shallow and barely noticeable save for the light.
Was he the only one who could see its light? His guards (two were missing) shrugged it off, said it must have been there before, but he knew, he knew. Something special had happened here, something to do with his designs. That light seeped through and beckoned to him even now, even as he fiddled with the remote he'd put together over the past few days.
Metal shifted around him, stubborn in its grinding movements. He pressed a button and a mechanism turned, and white light spilled from its designs towards the cracks.
"Yes," he whispered, watching the glow grow brighter, grow hungrier. It was working. He didn't know what it was, not truly, but it was working.
Of course he knew what his machines were. They were old designs, put together in rough drafts, too good to scrap but too jarring to place with the rest of his displays. Some were born of sketches, some were revised again and again, one wall was based on the most distinct drawing of his ancestor, the first toymaker in the family, Phillip LeMarchand. John knew what he had made, but he did not know what it was doing now, and he needed to know. He needed the knowledge like air.
Another shift, another groan. John grinned, pushing his hair back from his face. The song of metal and magic was in his blood - he remembered this, something passed down into his veins that had waited so patiently. Everything moved, and turned, and with one click he knew it was complete. John turned to face the crack, and it split open.
White light flooded his eyes; he covered them but it did nothing, as he felt blinded by everything else as well. Wind and wails screamed into his ears; there was a dull thud on the inside of his skull that pounded harder with each sound. He stepped forward, towards the light, beckoned by its horror and its impossibility. He reached out a hand, and though he could not see, he could feel as another hand took his.
And all at once, he remembered.
He remembered stories, old journals of an ancestor who'd come up with the first designs, desperate to shut the door he'd opened. He'd visited those writings - puzzle boxes and patterns, wealthy nobles and portals to unknown Hells.
If John were a religious man he'd have been frightened; if he'd gotten enough sleep, perhaps he'd have noticed how closely his designs had come to some of the mad sketches in LeMarchand's later journals, not out of art but of desperation. If he'd gone home and had a good night's rest, perhaps he might have thought to look deeper, to ask questions of this wonder - this light - before he started playing with it.
The hand closed around his; he was pulled into a pair of arms, and the hands cupped his face.
If John hadn't been so fixated on the light, perhaps he'd have remembered the girl who'd been so afraid of his designs.
Kirsty.
He opened his eyes and screamed until the world went black.
The light spilled back into the crack and it sealed shut. He collapsed to his knees, to the floor, and fell onto his side. He stayed there, a rag-doll, for an eternity. His ragged breath slowed; his jackhammer pulse tapered out into something steady. Around him the machines groaned once more; they fell back into place, their original positions, and the remote sparked where it lay beside his hand. The world shifted back into place, reality resetting, and then all was silent.
John Merchant's eyes opened. He got up.
His wife and son were asleep, he thought, but he would be there when they woke. He stood there for several minutes, stock-still in the silence, and thought. Then he started for the exit.
He would need sleep, he thought, and he would need to talk to his wife in the morning. There was much to be discussed.
SO I figured out where I wanted to start with this one and wanted to get it down, but updates on this will be slow as I work out the rest of the plot. In the meantime, I've got an update for Reconstructed in the works, so look out for that soon!
