Chapter 5

Tony stood there staring in absolute shock as Tim seemed to sink to the ground in slow motion. He did not drop the gun, but the blackness left his eyes. A whorl of blackness began to seep out of his eyes, gathering in a twisting black cloud above him, knotting, tangling in itself and it seemed to be sucking the universe in with it as Tim fell onto his back, his eyes staring straight up.

Tony barely noticed all that, however. His eyes were fixed on the bullet hole in Tim's chest, Tim's open...dead eyes. He felt tears in his own. This really was a horror movie...and there were no ending credits.

The swirling continued and Tony dropped to his knees, still looking only at Tim.

Then, after a few minutes, he noticed that there was no darkness, no space, no swirling cloud of evil. Just Tim, bleeding out on the floor. Just a big empty room...

...filled with green light?

Tony looked up and saw the shafts of light he had seen before swirl down from the ceiling. A ceiling that he could almost see. It glowed with a strange light. Those strange lights came down in tendrils, swooping down, around Tim. More lights, green...blue...red. They came down and covered Tim from head to toe. There were so many lights that Tony couldn't look...not that he could see much anyway with the tears he couldn't hold back.

Suddenly, the lights disappeared, leaving Tony and Tim in a dim, gray light...which was coming from a skylight, Tony realized. The entire ceiling was a skylight far above his head. He looked up at it...but a sound drew his eyes, unbelieving, back down.

Tim's body moved.

There was no blood on the floor.

There was still a hole in Tim's shirt but there was no blood.

Tim's eyes were still staring dead-like up at the ceiling, but then, they blinked.

Then, Tim took a breath...then, another.

Tony nearly fell over trying to move to him.

Tim blinked again. ...and took another breath.

"McGee?" Tony whispered, almost afraid to hope.

"Tony," came the soft reply.

"You're alive?"

"Yeah."

"How?"

"I don't know."

"He left."

"Yeah."

"What now?"

"I don't know."

Tim blinked again and sat up, hand to his chest. He and Tony stared at each other for a long moment.

"You ever do that again..." Tony said.

Tim met his gaze, promising nothing, and then stood up, wincing. "This is where it has to be."

"What?"

"The ending point. This is the central node. Everything points here...but I don't see anything here. Do you?"

"No."

Tim ignored Tony's accusing gaze. There was no way he could explain how it had felt to have that evil thing crawling around inside him, to be at the mercy of something so dark. Something that, as he had been told, had no mercy at all. He shivered remembering it. Then, his eye fell upon the wall. It was small, barely visible if you weren't watching for it.

"There it is," he said, catching Tony's attention.

"What?"

"There." Tim walked over and put his right hand directly over the small etching of his tattoo.

"Probie...wha–?"

Tony didn't get a chance to finish his question. The room began to shake. A roaring sound drowned out the possibility of verbal communication. The ceiling overhead shattered, sending fine bits of glass down on them, forcing them to cover their eyes.

The shaking intensified and both men were thrown off their feet and a small dais appeared in the center of the room. Emblazoned on it was the same symbol Tim had on his palm. Tim got to his feet and walked toward the dais.

"Wait, McGee!"

"What?"

"What's going to happen this time?"

"I don't know," Tim said, but he never looked away from the symbol. It was drawing him closer...ever closer. "I just know that whatever happens has to happen."

"No, it doesn't!"

"Yes. ...not because I have no choice but because I can't do anything else...and still be who I am. I chose to go into law enforcement because I wanted to help people, to keep them safe. How can I walk away from all these cries and leave them to suffer? I can't. So...this has to happen." He pushed past Tony and stepped onto the dais.

The darkness began to creep in once more, the Proprietor having been signaled that Tim was alive and trying again.

"Probie!"

"I see it!" Tim straightened himself, orienting his body to stand perfectly on the symbol.

"Three into one!" he shouted. With all the force of a sonic boom, the words reverberated around the room as Tim stood. The sound coiled around the darkness, temporarily holding it back.

"Mind!" A shaft of blue light pierced through Tim's head, lighting up his eyes.

"Body!" Another shaft, this time green, came up from the ground, surrounding him entirely.

"Heart!" A final shaft of pure white light stabbed straight through Tim's chest.

The darkness freed itself from the entrapping sound. It coiled itself and prepared to launch.

"Probie!" Tony shouted, trying to make himself heard above the roaring. He tried to move but looked down and found that there was a gentle hand holding him in place.

"This must be his fight now. You can do nothing more for him but wait until the end."

Tony looked back and saw a woman with bright green eyes, a green glow enveloping her. She was not looking at him, but at Tim, a sad smile on her face.

"You're the one..."

"He may succeed where the others have failed."

"Others?"

"Yes. One every generation. There is always one...and we are drawn to that one. Mongothsberd is bound to them...and they are bound to Mongothsberd."

The darkness coiled again, having been repelled by the light. Tim fell to the dais, the light began to twist and knot as the darkness began to spin around it, swirling faster and faster and closer and closer.

"He's not going to make it!"

"He is so close."

Tony tried to run forward again, but the hand on his arm, as insubstantial as it appeared, was strong.

"McGee, you can do it!" Tony shouted, pulling against that hand.

"No, you must stand still. You cannot do what he can do. He can survive the division. He must see what they are together. He will do it."

Finally, Tony stopped fighting the arm and watched, willing Tim to fight back, willing him to win. He didn't like standing on the sidelines, but he had to admit, this time, that there was nothing else he could do. He could only watch the struggle.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

It was like nothing he had ever felt before. Tim felt as though he had a million watts of electricity surging through him, through every part of who he was. He could see them all now. They were all tightly bound, not with cords. There were no bars. They were held by the force of the darkness the Proprietor commanded. These were people who had nearly died and at the moment of death, their souls had been stolen, supporting this evil, feeding its darkness. Falsity in place of true life. Even death had its place in life. Take it away and the cycle is disrupted. He could see it...but he could also feel the power weakening. He couldn't figure out how to let that power out of him before the darkness smothered it, smothered him. Erased him from existence...and through that, erasing any chance of freeing them. The power would die inside him...forever.

The words he had shouted echoed in his head and he saw them, separate pieces. All necessary. Without them... Of course! That was it. That was always it. Always had been. He struggled back to his feet.

The darkness dove toward him just as he screamed the final word, the word that released the power from inside him and sent it out, through the streets of Mongothsberd, through the air, saturating every bit of it with the energy that could break the bonds. Mongothsberd was not death. It was not life. It was that space in between. Stagnant, static. Never changing.

"Life!" Tim shouted and felt the darkness come over him, swirling through him even as the energy surged from him out into the air, freeing the souls so long kept bound, allowing them the chance to complete the cycle of their lives. The darkness, the Proprietor, knew his time was drawing to an end and he would take the one soul with him as he fell into oblivion. Tim felt it drawing tightly around him, smothering him, choking his soul off from the life around him...sucking him down into nothing.

Tim fought, desperate to live...because he knew that if he lost this struggle, he would not die. He would cease to exist.

"No!"

The sound, a real sound, pierced through the encroaching darkness and Tim felt himself falling. Falling...falling...endlessly into...