Chapter 1

I am born from the echo of a gunshot, within a maze of plumbing. The muffled ring of a cellphone. A shower of glass, a waterfall of sunlight. Startled silence. The frantic flight of awestruck pigeons. A single drop of moisture condenses on the copper pipe above my head and splatters on my forehead.

My hands are humming. Engines churn with rattled steel. The building belches steam and heat. Hot grease burns on raw skin. I blink. Two hundred yards away, the crowd parts along the path of the bullet, like waves cut across the surface of endless ocean.

A cellphone rings dull and faint, as if I were submerged. My thigh vibrates. I melt into noise. The room stutters with light sliced through spinning vent fans. The cool rush of air pumping through the hidden nervous system of the library. The rifle barrel screams and hisses. Each passing moment, it weighs more, pulling me into my body.

History is measured in seconds. The cellphone rings. A moment contains the universe. I am shattered glass. The crystal arcs that fall beneath a stampede of panic. Shards and pieces, broken reflections, slivers of a hundred lives.

A cellphone rings. It says, “Mercury and obsidian.”

Symbols, alchemical and potent, forced down my throat. Thoughts, like a plague spreading through my brain. Ratchets and cranks. The barrel whirls along its threads, ejected from the stock. With the precision of a surgeon, I disassemble the gun while wondering what it is I am doing here. What thoughts unwind through my mind. Why my hands are moving in intricate patterns across the oiled steel that moments ago vibrated with my birth. Once reduced to its constituents, the gun is little more than a pile of bolts and levers that clatter into the bottom of my backpack.

My fingers slip the vent cover back into place. The screams have started. The waves of the crowd converge back to the source of their rupture, the lifeless body under a dogpile on stage. A terrible pressure grips my molar and twists. Seizures convulse on the edge of my attention, unfathomable pain descending down my throat. The only thing preventing me from prying and ripping the tooth out is a lack of pliers.

Words constrict on my tongue, Caput mortuum. I swallow lacerations. A supernova erupts in my throat, a consuming fire spreading across my face, emanating from my tooth. The pain shoots perpendicular to my body, sheering thoughts from movement. Time flows around me, as though I were an afterthought, a mere curiosity. My legs carry me of their own accord. Through maintenance hatches. Hazy red lights and pipes whistling with inaudible human voices. Secrets. Into the stark white of flourescent tubes, a lineoleum labyrinth of offices and closets. Stairwells curling like vines up the sides of fused concrete.

Down and down, spiraling. Watched by the sinister lens of an electronic eye. Tracked down closed circuit hallways, fed into the wires, fractals of me in high definition multiplying on hidden screens. I am watching myself from the back of an unmarked van, headphones tuned to the tapping of my rubber heels against the dull shine of floors, the labored gasping of newborn life heaving through my lungs. A pulsating line of pixels tracks my thoughts, transcribing each errant whim onto transistors. My mind is a warehouse, a data center, a trillion converging currents. The lancing thermal expansion of space cracks my jaw, pounding through my tooth.

Doors lead me through rows of books, through ranks of non-fiction and classics. The weathered yellow of discarded yarns. Mold spores trail in my wake. The air is thick with whispered prayers, vacated tables still bearing scrawled notes and open pages. Murmurs and breathless exchanges tickle ears. Huddled students, crying underneath desks, hug each other and beseech invisible forces.

I press my tongue against a blossom of fire. Sharp streams of electricity vibrate through my bones. Is this life? Compelled and ushered along rails, drawn inexplicably from nothing and cast in a world of searing pain and confusion. Where are my memories? What is happening?

Down and down, spiraling. Past crowds arrayed around windows, noses pressed against glass. Foggy imprints of fear, smeared in suspended animation. I disappear through art displays and ceramic statues. Decades unpeel, scenes flash, projected directly into my brain. Somewhere, a man grovels and begs me not to kill him. A hammer cocks through reverberating echoes, through spools of time. Iron will manifests in the unforgiving pressure twitch of a trigger finger, branching universes growing from a single, compressed millimeter springing back into place. A clicking and then a loud clack, my boot heels pounding towards the exit, towards freedom.

In the lobby, an angel awaits amidst the chaos. Golden hair framing the eyes of God. Drooping swoops of glowing thread, knitted together with criss-crossed needles, wrapped and crucified to her skull. She smiles directly at me.

“May I take your bag?” She asks as if nothing at all were amiss.

Thoughtless, I hand the librarian my bag. She places it in a plastic bin and then motions toward the glass doors.

“Thank you for your patronage!”, She smiles and leads me to the door, gently guiding me outside. I stare at her in bewilderment. She says, “Please do come again.”

Outside, the heavens rain sheets of locusts. Metallic scarabs balancing atop symmetrically distributed propellers, descending in perfect vertical lines, coating the sky and filling the air with the barely perceptible buzz of hive minds. Swarms hover over fleeing crowds, like shepherds herding flocks. Flitting clouds of gyroscopic eyes, recording and cataloguing, scanning faces, broadcasting signals, communing with hidden realities.

Slamming shutters canvas the landscape, arranging the puzzle pieces of geography into stop motion frames. Strung together thoughts. Flickering flashes, infrared filters. My heat radiates the deep purple of stellar depths, moves through fields oozing yellow and orange, the red of racing hearts, away from the fading blue going to black on stage. Algorithms lock onto electromagnetic signatures emitting from my cortices. I am following myself, watching myself, wondering what I am doing, why I am not following the plan. Contingencies activate, jets are scrambled, satelittes triangulate.

Surging tendrils of flame and black infernos. My mouth is a furnace, bellowing fire. My tooth is white hot, molten and ionized. Glitches and stack overflows, errors and crashes. I would trade oblivion for relief. For an answer.

I manuever through shouting crowds, navigating the rapids. Golf carts of security guards veer through soft grass, spewing mud. A man kneels hand-cuffed. Fingers angle up towards the library, singling out windows. In the distance, sirens squeal their approach.

A drone bobs down in front of me, tilting in curiosity. Mechanical whirring, the click of echolocation. Rewound tape speeding through axles. My inverted reflection stares back at me, hamstrung across the convex lens. A red light blinks on and off within the pitch-black pupil. The machine spins on bearings, reangling its thrust. Soundless, it retreats upward, disappearing into the overcast sky.

Seconds later, a screech rings in my ears, high-pitched and unbearable. Muscles spasm. Knees buckle. Gravel grinds against my palms. I spit blood on concrete, gasping. Oxygen bubbles pop in my veins. Bulging eyes. A pluming rack of veins hangs around my neck. Vision dissolves into nothing.

The cellphone rings. Lower substrates of grey matter engage. I am moved by poison, possessed. A palsy finger flutters across the screen. A voice commands, “Nightshade and myrrh.”

All at once, tension goes slack. I feel gravity regain control. Balance restored. My feet find the ground. A deep breath of clean air, the tiniest of reliefs, before I realize I am completely lost. I gaze around the campus amphitheater. My memory is all but blank, filled with vague shapes and fleeting concepts. I know places have names, but names have no place. No place in my mind. What is my name?

I hold my hand in front of my face and tell my fingers to flex. They curl upon command. A curious discovery, that these thoughts are more than just words.

Suddenly, I am on the ground again. A delayed sensation follows, as though flattened by a runaway train. Crackling lights spin. My lungs struggle against constricting muscles. A mound of flesh and stinking breath bodyslams me. Memories shouted into my ears.