- Chapter 090 -

  Why now?

  The granite gates didn't just float back into place, Mark had to mentally drag them. In the physics of his own mind, repair work required effort. He visualized the heavy chains, the pulleys, the sheer, grinding mechanical force needed to right the massive slabs. With a mental heave that felt like lifting a girder, he slammed the gates shut against the stone frame.

  Thud. The seal held.

  Inside the perimeter, Tony was finishing the cleanup. The electric-blue tiger paced the scorched earth where the green fog had spilled, snapping his jaws at the lingering wisps of toxic mist. Each snap was a crack of thunder, dissipating the smog into harmless static.

  Mark leaned against the cold stone of the wall, wiping phantom sweat from his brow. The library was quiet again, but it was a sullen, pressurized silence. He could feel it vibrating against the soles of his boots, it was becoming a boiler running over the red line.

  "We need a vent," Mark muttered to the empty air.

  Containing the stolen knowledge wasn't enough. It was too volatile, too dense. Every time he accessed it, every time he tried to pull a useful schematic from the wreckage, the pressure spiked. He needed a way to bleed off the excess energy before it blew the doors off again, leading to another episode.

  He looked at Tony. The tiger chuffed.

  "Good work," Mark said. "I should really add some cat treats to this area, Do tigers like cat treats?"

  He closed his eyes, preparing for the transition. He braced himself for the waking world, for the smell of Carl's workshop, the inevitable headache, and the sound of Tori telling him exactly how stupid he was. He was thinking of which excuse would be best…

  The world trembled…

  It wasn't the rhythmic thud of the library throwing a tantrum. It was a seismic shift, a fundamental dislocation of the ground beneath his feet.

  Mark opened his eyes, expecting the workshop ceiling, or more likely the workshop bench.

  He saw trees.

  Tall, imposing pines, their branches heavy with snow, stretching up into the now familiar and changing sky of The Ark. The drystone wall of his hillside contamination zone was gone. The gravel path was gone. He was standing ankle-deep in fresh, powder-soft snow.

  The air wasn't stale, it was biting, freezing cold, carrying the sharp scent of pine resin and the underlying, copper tang of blood.

  It was the Forest outside the walls. The exact spot where he had arrived on The Ark.

  The laugh cut through the freezing air like a serrated blade. It was a sound Mark knew intimately, a high-pitched, grating cackle that had been the soundtrack to his first, terrifying hour on this world. It came from the reeds across the frozen stream, a malice that felt old and stale.

  Mark didn't flinch. He didn't cower against a tree or scramble for footing in the snow. He turned, his boots planting firmly in the drift, his posture rigid with fury. He knew this wasn’t real, and this time he would not be a spectator in his own mind.

  "Which idiot," Mark shouted, his voice echoing through the unnatural stillness of the pines, "failed to read the sign?"

  He pointed a finger at the empty air, at the concept of the intrusion itself.

  "NO VISITORS!"

  The reeds parted. The creature launched itself.

  It was exactly as he remembered, small, red-skinned, a grotesque caricature of a monkey with a clown's nightmare smile. It flew through the air, claws extended, a missile of teeth and hate.

  But Mark wasn't the disoriented, concussion-addled victim he had when this memory was formed. He was the architect of this space.

  He reached down. His hand didn't scrabble for a weapon, it demanded one. The snow yielded a heavy, frozen branch, thick as a baseball bat and hard as iron. He gripped it with both hands, his stance widening instinctively.

  The imp was mid-air. It had no leverage. It had no trajectory control. It was just a object moving on a ballistic arc.

  Mark pivoted. He tracked the red blur. He swung.

  CRACK.

  The impact was a satisfying vibration that rang all the way up his arms. The branch connected squarely with the creature's ribs. The imp’s shriek of triumph turned into a squeal of shock as its momentum was violently reversed. It was batted out of the air, tumbling end over end to crash into a snowbank twenty feet away.

  It scrambled to its feet, hissed once, and seeing the cold, murderous calculation in Mark's eyes, turned and fled into the darkness of the trees.

  Mark lowered the branch. He didn't chase it, pest control was necessary.

  "That," a voice rumbled from the shadows, "was not what I expected."

  Mark spun around.

  Silas stepped out from behind the trunk of a massive pine. The old miner looked different here. In the waking world, he was weathered and sturdy, a mountain of a man. Here, he was ancient. His skin was like cracked parchment, his eyes burning with a stern, judgmental light that felt heavy enough to crush coal. He didn't look like a friend.

  Mark dropped the branch, it was unnecessary.

  "You are unwelcome here," Mark said with disdain. He felt the violation of it, the intrusion of another mind into his sanctuary. First Tory, then Clyde, now Silas. Everyone seemed to think his head was a public park.

  The air beside Mark crackled, ozone overpowering the pine.

  Tony materialized.

  The electric-blue tiger snapped into existence, a sudden, violent assertion of dominance. He stood at Mark's hip, his shoulder brushing Mark's leg. He was massive, his fur spiking with static charge, his white-lightning stripes illuminating the snow.

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  Tony lowered his head, his ears flattening. A growl like a generator starting up, rolled out toward the old man.

  "Get out,"

  Silas didn't flinch. He didn't look at the massive, lightning-wreathed tiger. He looked straight at Mark, his expression one of bored patience.

  "BOY," Silas rumbled, the word crashing through the air like a falling boulder. "If you actually had the power to back up that order, you would have made use of it long ago. You wouldn't be standing in a memory of your weakness, waving a stick at a nuisance."

  He took a step forward, the snow crunching under his boot.

  "And because you clearly don't," Silas continued, his voice hardening, "It’s been decided you never will have that power."

  Mark narrowed his eyes. He was done with visitors. He was done with people thinking they owned the lease on his subconscious. He focused his will, reaching for the fabric of the dreamscape. He didn't try to visualize a wall or a gate. He tried to change the channel.

  He pushed.

  Nothing happened.

  The pines didn't fade. The cold didn't lift. The snow remained solid and freezing around his ankles.

  Mark felt a cold knot of genuine alarm tighten in his stomach. With Clyde, the resistance had been a bad wrestling match, a struggle against a force he could identify and eventually outmaneuver. This was different, his well was pushing against a wall of solid stone.

  Where Clyde had been powerful, but ultimately unprepared, Silas had the experience and had done his homework, he knew Silas was mentoring Tori, and he could forgive if Tori had shared what she knew, Silas however was crossing the line.

  "You're not like Clyde," Mark said, the assessment a failed attempt. "He was a tool used in the wrong context. You're... you're more…"

  "What gives you the right?" Mark demanded, stepping forward, placing himself between Silas and the low-growling Tony. "To decide what power belongs to who? You're a retired miner who throws fights in the street. Not a Judge."

  "I am the mountain in dreams," Silas stated.

  The air in the forest grew heavier, the gravity increasing until it felt like the sky was pressing down on Mark's shoulders.

  "I am the only Jade Dreamer of The Ark," Silas revealed, the truth of it ringing with the absolute certainty of stone. "I have watched situations such as yours play out before."

  He looked at Mark, his eyes ancient and weary, filled with the ghosts of three centuries of failure.

  "Your choices. Your perspective. Your 'logic.' I have seen it a hundred times over three hundred years. Bright minds. Broken souls. They think they can rebuild the world, but they always start by breaking themselves and burning those around them."

  He pointed a gnarled finger at Mark.

  "Memory and Dreams are not for those with broken minds, boy. They require a stability you do not possess. You are a cracked vessel that leaks poison."

  Silas lowered his hand. The crushing gravity lifted slightly, but the threat remained.

  "Walk away," Silas warned. It wasn't a suggestion. "Walk away from the magic. From research beyond you. Fade into obscurity. Be a consultant, a baker. Be normal, be boring."

  He leaned in, his face a mask of grim finality.

  "Do not make others send me to bury you. I will not make the mistakes that the memory thief made. I do not play games, I end them"

  "You arrogant, decrepit old man," Mark snapped. His anger was cold and hard, a knot of frustration. "You're just another relic. Another senior sitting on a board of old people, holding onto the past because the future terrifies you. Scared because you or your kind have failed at some point, and all you can see now is failure."

  He stepped closer, leaning into the pressure of Silas's aura.

  "You're failing to account for the new, for what changes, and what should be risked."

  Silas didn't bite. He didn't shout back. He simply looked at Mark with that terrible, ancient pity.

  "Risks," Silas murmured. "Let us look at your risks!"

  The air between them shimmered, distorting like heat haze over tarmac. A shape coalesced from the snowy darkness.

  It wasn't Tony. It wasn't the imp.

  It was the Leopard.

  The primal terror from his first night. Its fur was matted with gore. Its jaws dripped with fresh, bright blood. Its eyes were freezing voids that promised a violent, agonizing end. It was the physical manifestation of Mark's own mortality, the first time he had truly understood that he could die here.

  Mark flinched. His heart stuttered, a primal reflex he couldn't control.

  Silas gestured to the beast. "You are defined only by your fear," he stated, his voice a gavel striking a sounding block. "By loss. By trauma. You are a collection of broken parts held together by panic. Without those ghosts, without that fear... you are nothing."

  The nightmare leopard crouched, muscles coiling for the spring. The memory of the fear was visceral, a cold spike in Mark's gut.

  But as he looked at the creature, something shifted.

  He took a breath.

  "There is no shame in fear," Mark said. His voice trembled slightly, but the words were firm. "Fear is reality. Fear is the risk assessment telling you the odds are bad."

  He looked from the bloody muzzle of the beast to Silas.

  "It’s never simple. It evolves."

  Mark turned back to the leopard. He didn't look away from the cold blue eyes. He forced himself to look past the blood, past the nightmare of the helpless victim in the snow.

  He thought of a plate of steak left on a doorstep. He thought of a huntress with a bandage on her arm. He thought of a pile of shattered ice on his dining table and a smug chuff from the doorway.

  "That isn't a monster," Mark said.

  The image flickered. The gore on the leopard's muzzle wavered, turning into mist.

  "That is the companion of a friend," Mark stated, pulling on the true memory. "That is a smug, overfed cat that thinks it owns the roof."

  The nightmare broke.

  The blood vanished. The matted fur smoothed out into a sleek, silvery coat. The terrifying, soulless void in the eyes was replaced by a familiar, arrogant intelligence. The beast didn't lunge. It sat down. It wrapped its tail around its paws and looked at Mark with a distinct expression of bored superiority.

  It was just Taz.

  Mark looked back at Silas. The old man’s impassive mask had cracked, just a fraction.

  "You can't scare me with things I already understand," Mark said.

  "Why are you here?" Mark demanded, his voice cutting through the stillness of the snow-draped forest. "Why now? You stayed out of the fight with the Masons. You let Clyde dig around in my head for weeks. Now that I've stabilized, suddenly you decide I’m some kind of threat?"

  Silas didn't move. The snow around his boots didn't melt. He stood like a statute of judgment carved from the bedrock of the subconscious.

  "Stabilized?" Silas repeated, the word heavy with skepticism. "You have patched a dam with paper, boy. You have taken knowledge that drove a Jade mage to madness and stuffed it into a mind that cannot even light a candle."

  He took a step back, fading slightly into the shadows of the pines.

  "One such as you cannot be allowed down this path," Silas stated, his voice a final, unalterable edict. "The risk is unacceptable. The danger to the Collective, to the people around you... it is too great. If you do not remove yourself from the path, I or another will…"

  Mark opened his mouth to argue. He had a dozen counter-points ready, he never got the chance to speak.

  The forest didn't fade. It vanished.

  Gravity rotated ninety degrees. The sensation of standing on snow was instantly replaced by the terrifying, weightless lurch of being airborne. The cold mountain air rushed past his ears with a roar.

  Another nightmare, and here he was a projectile.

  The world was a blur of stone and sky, a violent, spinning kaleidoscope.

  CRACK.

  The impact was immediate and brutal. Wood splintered against his shoulder. The frame of Lothar's door shattered around him, a cacophony of breaking timber and tearing metal. The breath was knocked from his lungs in a single, agonizing huff as he hit the floorboards, sliding amidst the wreckage of a house that wasn't his.

  The pain was a white-hot flare in his spine, a perfect playback of the moment Alex Smith had broken him.

  Mark gasped, staring up at the ceiling of Lothar’s hallway, the dust of the impact drifting down like snow.