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Wolfgang Bogdanow had lost track of the time.
Ever since Whispers had stopped visiting him weeks ago—or was it days? Hours?—there was no clear demarcation between the lung-crushing awakenings in which his shuddering breaths were ripped out of him like rotten teeth—blood, tissue, and all—and his fitful, nightmare-ridden sleep in which he gasped for mercy, occasionally under the smug gaze of Lila, sometimes under his father’s shadowy grimace, and always under the disapproving stare of a blurry face he knew to be his own. Buried deep in the chrome labyrinth of BPO’s testing facility, he might as well have been buried six feet under the ground. The only reminder that he was tethered to this earth and not drifting in the abyss of death were the leather straps that bound him to the table. His skin chafed and bled from the friction of his futile attempts to break loose. But those attempts had ceased.
What was the point? His cluster was dead. Kala was dead.
“And you killed her,” said the blurry face. “Led him to her like a wolf to a lamb.”
The image of Kala sprawled out and terrified in the airport flashed before him, followed by the image of seven bodies on the floor simultaneously convulsing in a macabre orgy of pain.
His hope had not died there. No, upon waking to another hour in the operating room, he had sensed Will on the table with him, sharing the shocks, tasting the blood that caked his nostrils and lips like igneous rock. Briefly he had thought of grabbing onto Will and breaking through to wherever his real body was, just so he could beg him and Riley to save Kala. But that was exactly what Whispers wanted. With the Traceworks on his head, any thought was a crime. Then again, he was a criminal. Criminality died hard, for only moments after the hazsuits had stopped applying the paddles did Wolfgang reach into the psycellium, groping for Kala, for Lito, for Capheus, for anyone. Nothing greeted him but a brick wall. It briefly occurred to him that his cluster-mates might be on blockers, but as he was thrust back into his body and all its torments, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
“Trying to block me, are you?” Whispers had taunted. “How valiant.”
Then came another shock, shared with no one this time. His consciousness drained out of him like water out of a bathtub, and when he awoke again, it was in this dark basement room with no Whispers in sight and no Traceworks upon his head.
They’re going to lobotomize me.
The thought felt so true that he had no choice but to accept it as truth. He tried to remember if, in his last moments before losing consciousness, he had managed to break through the wall and exposed his cluster to Whispers. Why else would he be in this crypt and not in the operating room if Whispers hadn’t gotten everything out of him that he wanted? Whispers was done with him and he had been discarded. It then followed that if he was done with him, he must have achieved the horrific end that he told him he sought…
Desperately, Wolfgang had reached out for Kala again. That was when his father appeared, cackling.
A chill rampaged Wolfgang’s body. He was not one to believe in omens, but this face from the grave wracked him with dread. It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t possibly be here in the flesh, and yet through the metallic tang of his own blood he smelled the stench of vodka and rot on his father’s breath. The only reasonable conclusion was that he was dreaming.
“You wish,” murmured the cruel, beautiful face that materialized beside his father’s. It was Lila. She smirked triumphantly and waved something red, silky, and tattered. “It’s over.”
It took Wolfgang several seconds to realize that the object in her hand was the lacy red slip that he had found in his suitcase—Kala’s suitcase—while packing for Paris. The slip had been ripped to shreds, and from the lace emerged writhing maggots. It was then that he felt—that he knew—that Kala was dead. Kala was dead, the cluster was dead, and he was alone.
Presently, the blurry face drew close to Wolfgang and blew a plume of cigarette smoke into his eyes. They began to water.
“It’s only what you deserve.”
Wolfgang grasped for the sound of the IV drip, for the hum of the ventilator keeping him barely alive, for the indistinct whispers beyond the wall of the hazsuits—anything to distract him from himself.
“Give it up. It’s just a matter of time before Whispers turns you into one of them. Any minute now.”
He thrashed violently against his shackles. It was not in any real attempt to break loose but rather to try and hit himself. The wheels of the table wobbled dangerously beneath him and squeaked in protest.
The blurry face smirked mirthlessly. “You know I’m not really here. I’m in your head.”
He tapped Wolfgang’s forehead with his finger. It certainly felt real, but then again, so did being visited by any of his cluster-mates—a feeling, he realized, he would never have again. At that thought, he redoubled his thrashing. His head pounded with each movement; his chest threatened to shatter; a fresh spurt of blood rose into his mouth; the IV needle ripped out of his arm; an alarm sounded somewhere in the distance. But he dare not stop. Not until he was dead.
Suddenly, the door to the room banged open to reveal half a dozen hazsuits, one of whom wielded a syringe whose needle glistened under the harsh fluorescent lights of the exposed corridor.
“This is it,” said the blurry face before disappearing.
The hazsuits crowded around Wolfgang, two holding down his arms, two holding down his legs, one pinioning his head to the table, and the last one approaching him with the needle. Only one thought crossed his mind before the needle pierced the side of his neck and his eyes rolled into the back of his head.
Will I see Kala there?
Death was onerous. Wolfgang never thought that he would feel so heavy, so bound to the ground. And yet, there he was, lying paralyzed like a tranquilized elephant at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean as dark, tumultuous currents whipped over his head and dispersed the little bubbles that issued from his lips. He didn’t know how he knew it was the Atlantic Ocean or how it was that there were bubbles when he wasn’t even breathing. It didn’t matter. Death was absurd.
It crept up on you like a little boy with a rope in a Berlin backalley. It stormed into your mansion and obliterated your henchman with a Molotov cocktail before riddling your head with bullets.
Maybe Kala’s religion had been right and there was such a thing as karma. He tried to laugh, but he couldn’t even move his internal muscles. He was locked in. What a fitting end for someone as restless as him.
The Atlantic, he thought. The name drew forth a memory of him and his mother sitting around a table poring over a map of the world. His mother had pointed to all the countries in Europe and named their names and capitals. Her finger stopped at the Atlantic Ocean.
“Wolfgang, did you know,” she had asked, “the origin of the word Atlantic? It comes from the Greek Atlanikos, which means Atlas, which refers to the Atlas Mountains in Northern Africa.”
“No,” Wolfgang had said, dreaming of some place beyond Berlin.
“Northern Africa. I’ve never been there. I’ve always wanted to go to Morocco, but your father…”
There was no traveling anywhere now. No more Mumbai, no more Paris. He was stuck here for good. Slowly, he closed his eyes and begrudgingly accepted his fate. No use fighting anymore. If he were to spend the rest of his lobotomized eternity reliving memories, they might as well be good ones. He tried to think of Kala. He imagined her diving into the azure sea off the coast of Positano. He imagined her tangle of black hair floating around like kelp, her arms parting the water as she breast-stroked deeper and deeper until she was only meters away from his face.
And then he stopped. The Atlantic made it feel too real. He opened his eyes. There was nothing but the swirl of the currents pressing down hard on him.
Or was there? In the distance, a black speck swelled. It was an eclipsed sun waxing like a moon. The black ball wore a halo. Was this some angel of death? Wolfgang strained his eyes, but the more he stared at it, the brighter it grew until it was painful to keep his eyes open. He squinted, and the halo expanded into a sea of light, engulfing everything in his field of vision.
In a searing white flash, the Atlantic evaporated, and he came unbound. He buoyed up like a balloon lazily drifting into the midday sky. It was like floating, only he had no mass. He was indistinguishable from the white light that consisted of all the colors visible to the human eye. He was everywhere and nowhere. He was endless. He was God.
“Wolfgang,” came a whisper. It wasn’t his mother, but it might as well have been for how fundamentally familiar it was. “Wolfgang.”
The words sounded as if they were spoken through cotton. Faintly in the distance, he heard the gentle lapping of water against tile. The sound moored him for he knew it all too well. The Berlin spa. The swimming pool in Kala’s Mumbai penthouse suite. The shower in the sparse apartment where BPO had captured him. The tub into which his mother had birthed him.
Birthed him?
He frowned. In that instant, he became aware of his body: the pressure of his brows knitting together into that well-worn groove, the warm press of a hand against the back of his head and a hand under his knee, the cool lick of water against his buttocks and scrotum.
“Wolfgang.”
The voice was clearer and more insistent this time. The voice was the light.
As his eyes adjusted, a face came into view. At first, it was only a blur—and he had the transient terror that he was staring into his own face again. But the moment the face resolved, the fear dissipated like breaths on cold winter nights. (Breaths? He suddenly realized he was drawing breath again.)
“Wolfgang,” said Kala.
She was almost nose-to-nose with him. Her eyebrows flexed and strained. Tiny tears almost indistinguishable from the the droplets of water adorning her face cascaded down her cheeks and formed plump bulbs at her chin that plopped down onto his nose. She smiled incredulously, and laughter bubbled in her throat.
Her lips opened and closed, tasting words. But none needed to be spoken. He saw his reflection in her eyes, and then he phased into her body and saw hers in his. He was at once both party and witness to his own rebirth—birther and birthee.
I’m alive, they thought in unison.
Something warm and wet and sharp like alcohol surged through Wolfgang’s nose and out of his eyes. Kala removed a hand from his leg and brushed a finger across his cheek to wipe it away, and on her finger he saw a fat teardrop perched like a songbird. His shuddered with elation.
Kala drew his face to hers and her warm, soft lips found purchase on his forehead, his cheekbones, his nose, his mouth. She tasted salty and sweet, and the faint scent of chlorine danced in his nostrils.
“Welcome back, Wolfgang,” said a man.
Kala released him from the kiss. The curtain of her hair drew back to reveal six pairs of feet arranged in a semicircle a few meters away, above the ornate pool in which he and Kala floated. Wolfgang followed one pair of feet up and was greeted by Will’s smiling face.
“Welcome back,” said Riley, standing to Will’s left.
Slowly, Wolfgang turned his head and acknowledged each member of the cluster one-by-one. Sun merely bowed her head and smiled knowingly; Nomi clapped her hands; Lito choked back a sob and reached his arms out to Wolfgang; Capheus ran toward the pool and was about to dive in when Will raised an arm and gave him an elder-brotherly shake of the head.
Behind the cluster, Wolfgang spied arabesque patterns in the tiles of the walls, alcoves adorned with shining metal vases, and elegant Moorish arches as far as the eye could see.
“It’s not Paris,” Kala slowly murmured, staring at him intently until he returned his gaze to her. “It’s, um, Morocco, actually, which is the safest place we can be right now with the chairman still searching, not to alarm you, but it’s not quite home—”
Wolfgang lifted his arm out of the cool water and placed a trembling hand on her cheek.
“Home is wherever you are.”