"I'll kill him if this is for nothing," she told her reflection, and grabbed her backpack, which was sitting in the corner. She threw it over her shoulder and walked over to the section of blank wall where the portal would appear. A few moments of concentration, and the black doorway appeared, stabilized, and she walked through, into Myrnin's lab.
It was still a whole lot worse for wear. Broken glass glittered on the floor. Tables were overturned. There was still a faint haze of dust in the air.
Then it occurred to her tired, lagging brain, with a real shock, that she shouldn't have been able to do that. Not coming through the portal. The machine had controlled the portal . . . and the machine was a crushed metal mess in the basement.
Why had it worked?
Myrnin was in the back of the lab, standing in front of . . . something she couldn't see too clearly. He didn't turn around. "Claire," he said. "Thank you for coming."
"Yeah. Does Amelie know you're doing this?"
"She instructed me to rest," he said. "So no, in fact she doesn't. But ultimately, I don't think she'll be angry."
"You don't think so? Are you crazy?"
He didn't answer that directly. "I've been working all night," he said. "Some of the parts were still usable, but I was only able to cobble together the very basic elements."
"Elements of what?"
Myrnin finally moved, and Claire walked a few more steps toward him before stopping cold, her breath locked in her throat, her heart lurching, then hammering very, very fast.
Because that was a brain. In a jar. A jar of faintly green liquid that bubbled. There were tubes, copper tubes, circulating liquid, and there were wires, and there were clockworks ticking along, but there was a brain.
In a jar.
"What did you do?" Claire's voice didn't sound at all like her own. She didn't even realize that she'd said it out loud, until Myrnin looked directly at her.
"What I had to do," he said. "It won't work any other way. It's too dangerous. I can't risk anything like that happening again, and neither should you, Claire. Next time, we may not be so fortunate."
"You killed somebody," she said. Her throat was so tight that she thought she might choke on the words. "Oh, my God, you killed somebody and . . . put their brain . . . in--"
"The point is that the barriers are up," Myrnin said. "And we are safe. I did what I knew had to be done. But you mustn't tell him."
"Tell who?" Claire couldn't decide whether she was furious or terrified. Probably both.
Myrnin didn't answer.
The voice came out of her cell phone speaker, slightly muffled by her pocket--an eerie, disembodied voice that nevertheless was familiar.
The last thing she'd heard it say was Good-bye.
"He means Shane," said Frank Collins. The brain in the jar. "Don't tell Shane, Claire. This is going to have to be our secret."
The End