The In Between

Chapter 33

Justin

Tingling. And then nothing.

I can't feel my legs. I can't organize my thoughts.

I open my eyes. I have no idea where I am. All I can see is the gray gravel of the path I'm lying on.

I sit up carefully and look around, slowly coming to. I seem to be just inside the twenty-foot metal gate of Mission Registration Bureau. The whir of the motion detectors and video cameras overhead creates a low-level electronic buzz that rattles through every pore.

I try to remember how I got here, but I have no recollection, just fragments. I was at the quarry, my hand almost touching Tara's, and then, and then...I was pulled away by something or someone I could not see, powerless against its force, yanked from what I wanted most.

It felt like I was vacuumed back into the In Between.

My veins, my lungs, my head fill with the stultifying wet cement of the place.

"Get up." 

I look up. Damaris is standing over me, her tiny hands perched on her hips, her red hair cascading wildly over her narrow shoulders. Her face is scrunched up in disappointment.  

"Justin," she says sternly.

I rise carefully, adjusting to the weightlessness of the In Between once more.

"What were you thinking?" Damaris demands when I am standing beside her. "How could you have done this? Didn't you listen to anything I said?"

I begin to speak but she puts her hand up to stop me.

"This is not good. This is not good at all." She shakes her head in disapproval. "I thought...I thought...I put myself out for you, Justin. I vouched for you."

"I'm sorry." 

Damaris looks into my eyes and she is momentarily taken over by sadness. "I'm so disappointed," she says quietly. "I was certain you would do the right thing."

"I'm sorry," I say again.

She studies me. "Are you? Are you truly?"

She sees the answer in my eyes and looks away.

I'm not sorry. Tara said yes. She wants to be with me forever. She'll do whatever it takes.  

 I look around the room, the grayness closing in on me again. Tara hasn't been here. She can't know what I'm really asking. I can't even imagine her spending a day here. What if she got trapped in the In Between or worse?

"What did you say?" Damaris asks.

"Nothing," I say quickly.

Damaris sighs. "I don't know what we are going to tell Zerachiel. I don't know what your defense can possibly be."

"My defense?" 

"Did you think you could get away with this? Did you think he wouldn't know?"

I don't know how Zerachiel found out—the cameras in the hut, the chip, a spy, anything and everything seems possible. I wonder what happened to Anton, if he was also discovered or if he made it back safely. 

Damaris thrusts a thick piece of parchment paper into my hand. "Here."

Written across the top in ornate glossy black ink is a single word:

Summons

I turn it over but nothing more is written.

"Come. We mustn't keep Zerachiel waiting. You are in enough trouble as it is. More than enough."