Now You See Me

Forty-Eight: Collapse

"If we died out in the real world, how would we know?"

"For a minute there I thought you were actually going to say something useful."

I was too exhausted to even feel guilty at the hurt in Chris's expression. I put down the scissors I'd taken from behind the shop counter and pinned the strip of cloth in place around his hand, using my shoe to brush the bloody shards of glass away. We were huddled under the sill of the gift shop in the statuary corridor. Chris was sitting down, his back to the wall, watching me bind his hand as if it was someone else's. I couldn't find it in me to sit; I was too exhausted to stand, too restless to sit.

I couldn't help the lowering feeling of doom settling over me the longer we stayed here. We must have been here hours, trapped inside our own heads. We'd been darting from exhibition to exhibition, witnessing memories that each seemed less significant than the last, an unpredictable mix of mine and Leia's. They were broken memories. Some lasted no longer than a sentence before cutting off. Others we had to walk away from, after minutes wasted watching nothing at all. They didn't make sense; they were all in the wrong places. Whatever dynamic had brought us here had collapsed, but we had no way of telling why, or how to get out.

And I was starting to feel the ghost of some kind of illness; an unbearable dryness in the air, phantom pain prickling over my skin. I had the horrible feeling that wherever my material body was, it wasn't in water, and that terrified me.

"Sit down, Damien. You're making me tired just watching you." Chris's snippy comment was no less than I deserved for being a dick, but I still bristled.

"I can't. I feel too...restless." I bounced a little on my toes and glanced warily up at a naked Adonis next to me. I would swear that somehow these statues were watching us. "I think I'm dying."

Alarm flitted across his expression. Even I was a little surprised that that had come out of my mouth. "What the fuck, D? Where'd that come from?"

"I feel like...ghosting," I replied, dragging a hand down my face. "I don't think my real body's in water, Chris. I don't think it's been in water for a while."

He thought for a long moment. "I don't feel any different."

"Well I do, and it's worrying me."

Arduously, he got up and came over to me. He leaned close, peering into my eyes long and hard until I felt uncomfortable and looked away. Then, to my intense surprise, he hugged me.

"I won't let you die," he whispered.

"It's nice of you to say," I mumbled, muffled by his jacket, "But when it comes down to it I don't think there's much either of us can do about it from here."

He had no response. I leaned in and buried my face in his neck, fists bunched in his shirt. He smelled of hand soap and sweat, and something sweet and musky that rang a familiar bell. I didn't know where this sudden lack of reluctance to touch me had come from, but I was going to enjoy it.

"I love you," he mumbled. "I know you don't remember, but I do. Fucking love you, Damien."

My breath caught, but I struggled to say it back because he was right; I didn't remember. I remembered the emotion, of course – I'd said it enough times – but without the memories, it just felt superficial to repeat something that I wasn't sure I meant.

He squeezed my shoulders gently, and I knew he was preparing to separate us. It was tempting to cling on to stop him, but I was spared the need. His grip locked itself there as a loud clank echoed around the building; it rattled as it faded, as if something substantial and metallic had fallen from a height. Slowly he let go of me and stepped back to stare up the length of the corridor, in the vague direction which it had come from. I was so intent on the idea that someone or something was about to appear in the archway that the light, tickling touch of something landing on my face made me gasp and jump back about two feet. Chris whipped around as I clapped a hand to my cheek and pulled off something sharp but crumbly; it was only a shard of peeled black paint.