Sam Marlowe's Arc

Chapter 20 of 14

Sam stood at the door of the black house. The lock was gone. Inside, the Boss waited in the dark, and he would not walk a single step toward the white towers on his own. Sam had the Mayor's word. He had an open cell. He had no way to march a city-hating thing across town to the one meeting it would never choose. The Watcher sat on the curb nearby, notebook open on his knee. He had followed Sam since the docks, grinning like a man watching the end of a bet. Sam knew him as the one who told the truth no boss would. "He won't come," Sam said. "He'll walk into the wall before he walks to the Mayor." "Then don't lead him," the Watcher said. He did not look up from his page. "Chase him." He closed the book. "He runs from the Mayor. Make this place worse than the room. He'll run the only way left." Dolly stepped from the shadow of the house. She had refused to wait at the towers. "You want to herd him," she said. Plain, blunt. "Like cattle." She looked at the black doorway, then at Sam. "Fine. I'll be the thing he runs from on this side." "No," Sam said. "He knows your face. He threatened you." "That's why it works," she said. "He wants me. He'll chase me toward the one door I run through." She did not wait for his answer. She never had. Sam went in first. The dark inside pressed on his skin like cold water. The Boss turned. Two eyes, wrong and bright, found Sam's face. "You freed me," the Boss said. "You should run." "I came to finish it," Sam said. He tipped over a lamp. Oil spread. He struck a match and dropped it. Fire climbed the wall. The Boss hissed and backed from the flames, toward the only open door. The Boss burst out into the street. Dolly stood waiting. "Hey," she called, and ran. The Boss went after her, fast and furious, exactly as the Watcher said. Sam ran beside her. Block after block, the two of them drove the thing toward the glow at the city's center. The white towers rose ahead, pale and tall, grown from the ground like bone. Dolly reached the great white steps and spun aside. The Boss did not stop. He hit the towers' tall door and it swung wide. He stumbled through, into light. Sam came through behind him. The Mayor stood at the window, three eyes open, waiting as promised. The Boss saw his other half and froze. "No," the Boss said. "Not with him." "I know you're right," the Mayor said softly, the same words he'd given Sam. He stepped forward. The Boss stepped back and hit the closed door. Trapped. Both halves in one room. The thing Sam had chased for twenty days. Sam grabbed Dolly and pulled her against the wall. The air began to hum. The two figures faced each other across the white floor, dark and light, split down a seam Sam could almost see. "This ends one of us," the Boss said. "It ends both of us," the Mayor answered. "We were one." He reached out his six-fingered hand. The Boss, hating it, reached too. Their fingers met. Light flooded the room. Sam shut his eyes and held Dolly. A sound like the whole city drawing breath rolled over them. Then silence. Then nothing but the hum of the towers settling. Sam opened his eyes. The floor was empty. Two halves gone. Where they had stood lay the small enamel figure, the two faces fused now into one face, whole, no seam. The city would not flood. No boss would open a wall that no longer had a weak point to open. The hunt was over. Dolly stood close, her hand still in his. For years she had never said a word. Sam had never said one either. He looked at her, at the dust on her white dress, at the fact that she had run toward the thing that wanted her. "You should've stayed back," he said. "You needed a face he'd chase," she said. "I had one." She did not look away. Sam thought of his brother, found in pieces, no one looking. He had gone looking for a relic and found a whole city to save. He had saved it. He picked up the fused figure and slipped it into his coat. Outside, the fog over the harbor was thinning. Sam took Dolly's hand and led her down the white steps, into a city that would wake up tomorrow and never know how close it came. That was enough. For once, finishing the job was enough.