Dawn of the Void - Chapter 130

Chapter 130

James activated the Miracle with a single Aeviternum.

Serenity, the Brooklyn street, all of it fell away as his vision shifted and became blank. No; he could still see – but now he gazed out over an endless white plane of pearlescent material covered by white skies.

A blank slate.

Intuition and knowledge filled him. He could change this space to match whatever place he desired. The scope was limited. He couldn’t recreate Manhattan in here, but a city block? Sure. An apartment, maybe. A large room.

Or a bar.

This was the kind of decision some people would agonize over for ages. But for James it was simple. Serenity was hurting. They needed a safe place. A place to heal, to restore their spirits. And while he’d only been to Herman’s a couple of times, it had had an outsized impact on him.

A place of safety, illusory as that had been. A place where they could catch their breath. Restore.

James willed it back into existence.

The white infinite plane was replaced by a smoky room, a narrow slot with a bar running down its length and a single row of tall tables pressed against the opposite wall. Thousands of beer mats were stapled to the ceiling, and the place stank of smoke and alcohol. An old TV was affixed in the back corner, and the bar had been painted over so many times it was glossy and without any edges at all.

Herman didn’t appear behind the bar, but everything else was perfect. Better than it had been. Where the real bar had been dingy and worn, this version had a patina of nostalgic gloss over it all. The bottles glittered, the bar surface looked well waxed, the worst of the odors were gone, and the jukebox was playing mellow rock with plenty of reverb and a driving melody.

Fuck, even the TV in the upper corner of the room was playing Matlock instead of depressing news.

James inhaled deeply. A shudder of emotion passed through him. The world as it had been. As it would never be again. For a moment his throat tightened into a knot and he wondered if this was a mistake.

But no.

They had to remember what they were fighting for.

How things had once been.

So thinking, he left through the front door and emerged again on the street.

Serenity stared at him, wild-eyed. “Where’d you go? What happened? I swear to Jesus-fuck I was about to -”

“Here,” said James, extending his hand. “C’mon.”

Serenity froze. “What?”

James smiled. “Take my hand.”

“This is some weird shit, James.” She wiped the hem of her coat over her tear-stained cheeks, then took his hand.

James turned and the entrance to Herman’s appeared behind him. Looked like the original expenditure of Aeviternum for the creation of the joint extended to a first genuine entrance.

“What…?” Serenity’s eyes went wide as James pushed open the door and led her inside.

The music had changed. Some old school B.B. King was now smoldering in the background. The lighting was low, golden, spotlights along the bar.

“Oh shit,” whispered Serenity, stepping forward. James waited, watched.

She moved up to the bar and touched it, snatching her hand back as if expecting it to pop or disappear. She smoothed her bar over the broad beveled edge, touched a barstool, then turned rapidly back to him.

“My Demiplane miracle,” James said. “I had to give it shape.”

“And you chose this shithole?”

Her words were accusatory, acidic with disbelief, but her eyes were filling with tears again.

“Yeah,” sighed James. “Guess I did.”

Her lower lip trembled and she hung her head. Her shoulders hitched and she passed her forearm over her eyes again. “Stupid,” she whispered. “Why’d you waste such a miracle on this?”

James moved up and kissed the top of her head. Squeezed her shoulder and rounded the bar. Scanned the bottles. Everything was here. Every kind of liquor, the good stuff. He heard Serenity sniff and sit on a stool.

Below the bar a shotgun rested on the shelf. He drew out two glasses and set them on the bar. The wood was whorled and scarred in the amber spotlight. Took down a bottle of fine whiskey and poured a double-shot for each of them.

“Bonnie and Clyde,” he said with a smile, taking up his glass.

Serenity took up her own and gazed at him. Her expression was raw, she tried to smile, but instead verged on tears again.

“Bonnie and Clyde,” she whispered, and slammed the drink back.

James sipped. It was damn good. Warm flames washed down his throat and curled like a contented housecat in his stomach. “Another?”

“Fuck yeah,” she whispered.

They drank. James leaned on one elbow. B.B. King changed to Howling’ Wolf, then Metallica. When Foghat came on, Serenity laughed. “Your jukebox’s got an identity crisis.”

“Hey,” protested James. “I like Slow Ride.”

“It’s just like I remember it,” said Serenity, passing her palm over the bar again. “But… not the real bar. It’s how I think of it at the best times. Those first few nights I started coming here. Fuck, that was six years ago. I had this feather boa. One night I did this dance right here on the bar, and the feather boa… well, never mind. Herman draped it up there over the bottles, but someone stole it a few months later.”

“Sounds like a good time.”

“Yeah, it was.” She propped her cheek on her palm and leaned over. “Though at the time I was always freaking out over something.” She smiled. “How come we only realize after how good we had it?”

“Life’s still good.” James poured himself another drink. “We’re still breathing. We’re doing something worthwhile. I mean, shit. Compared to this, nothing else I ever did mattered.”

Serenity took up her glass. “You’re wrong there. You’d not be able to even do this if you hadn’t lived all that stuff before.”

“You know, I took this class in college once.” James leaned back on his elbow. “History of World War I. After it was all over, this poet called Auden toured France, went and looked at the trenches. Some folks traveling him asked why those men had been willing to die by the millions. How they’d stayed month after month, without hope, fighting on and on in what must have felt like hell.”

Serenity raised an eyebrow. “And this Auden dude had an answer?”

“Yeah.” James stared down into his glass. “He said they fought for everything English. Christmas pudding and carols, pubs and pints of beer, stuff like that. Commonplace things. Normal things that made them proud to be Brits. Nothing fancy. The stuff that made up their lives. The good stuff. The small stuff.”

“I’d laugh, but like, a lot of them died for that shit, right?” Serenity frowned at him. “Like over five thousand of them?”

James stared. “Over -? No, Serenity, more like -”

She threw a coaster at him. “I’m kidding! Jesus, how uneducated do you think I am.” She raised her glass to her lips. “I know that over a hundred thousand people died in the first world war.”

James made a sour expression at her.

Serenity set her glass down. They were silent for a spell, listening to the music, enjoying the mild buzz, the warmth and atmosphere.

“You ever get this weird feeling that you’re not even yourself any more?” She looked up at him hesitantly.

“How so?”

“I mean, the woman who danced on this bar six years ago… she feels like a complete stranger. Even the woman who met you in that ER when this all started. I can barely remember who they were. Now I can turn invisible, turn into a demon, merge with the avatar of Fortitude, summon angels…”

She slowly shook her head, marveling. “I can walk around with two autocannons strapped to my arms and rain down hell on actual demons in hell. I mean, who are we? I’m not that woman who danced here, a thousand years ago. I understand her better. I’ve got so much clarity on her fucked up problems it’s like I got a therapist cheat code and read the instruction manual on myself.” She met James’s gaze. “I mean, for fuck’s sake, I felt like an actual star after absorbing that cube. I’m not that Serenity. That Serenity is dead and gone.”

James pursed his lips and lowered his chin. Thought on who he’d been when the Nem1 had first accosted him in that subway station. Half drunk, stinking to high heaven, obsessed with preserving his backpack full of accumulated crap. With nowhere to go, a past he didn’t want to think about, and a general sense that he’d not last another five years.

Now?

“Yeah.” He rolled his glass around on its base, watching the whiskey flow within. “I don’t know. Maybe this happens to everyone who fights in a war long enough. You forget who you were before it. Become a stranger to yourself. But you don’t yet know who you’ve become. Maybe you can’t be that new person till the war is over. Till you have enough time to process what happened to you and decide what matters to you now.”

“So you’re saying we gotta put this question on hold till we win this war?”

James grinned. “Something like that. A raincheck. Let’s see who we’ve become after we defeat the 27th floor. I’ll give you an answer then.”

“Ha, fair.” Serenity pushed her empty glass forward. “One for the road?”

“One for the road.”

Hotel California came on, and they drank in silence, listening. James took in the atmosphere. Let it sink in deep and replenish a reserve he’d not realized he was running short of. Took it all in, from Herman’s randomly framed newspaper stories about a local fire station that had won a ladder-carrying race to faded polaroid’s stuck around the bar of random nights at the bar, groups of friends leering and flicking off the cameraman.

“Let’s go,” he said, setting his empty glass down.

“Sure.” Serenity stood up. “This place is dead anyways.”