Page 56 of Once a Villain
“He’s going to throw us in,” Ruth muttered.
“Don’t tempt me,” Tom said. He opened the door from the kitchenette and stepped out onto the deck.
There was a small floating pontoon attached to one of the legs of the bridge. Tom grabbed the edge and lashed the boat to it.
“What are youdoing?” Jamie said. “Why is there even a pontoon under that bridge?”
“Come out here,” Tom said.
“Areyou going to throw us in?” Aaron said warily.
“I want you to see something.” Tom hoisted himself up onto the narrowboat’s roof.
“Why do we have to see it on theroof?” Aaron grumbled. But when Joan followed Tom out, he fell into step behind her.
The water was choppy by the bridge, and the deck rocked underfoot. Joan’s hair flew, briny river spray spitting at her face, as she climbed onto the roof.
“There are handholds.” Tom pointed to metal loops sticking up at regular intervals on the roof. “You’ll be more stable if you crouch.”
The others came up one by one. It was a tight fit for the six of them, and they ended up kneeling in a line, trying to stay balanced.
“Well... ,” Aaron said. “I see the city. But I could have seen it through the window too.”
Tom didn’t smile. He really was worried about something. Unease curled in Joan’s gut.
“Look... ,” Tom said. “I’m not saying I believe that you’re here for benign purposes. And I’m certainly not saying I’ll help you. But... Nick spoke of damage in that recording, and I think I know what he meant.”
“I don’t understand,” Aaron said.
Tom pointed at the sky. “Look.”
Joan followed his gaze. The sky was clouded, the sun penetrating feebly through the gray. It was going to rain again soon. She couldn’t see anything unusual in the sky, but she was feeling even more uneasy now.
“You need to tilt your head,” Tom said. “You can only see it from a certain angle.”
Joan tilted her head. She couldn’t see anything but the sky. She shuffled on her knees, trying to line up her view with Tom’s pointing finger. “I don’t know what—” she said, and then she stopped, the words sticking in her throat.
She heard, distantly, Aaron make a horrified sound, and Jamie groaning like he was going to be sick.Shewas going to be sick.
Above them, the sky was suddenly cobwebbed and black, and something wasmovingin the darkness, wriggling and crawlinglike maggots feasting on turned meat.
Joan had been sensing corruption and decay from the moment she’d arrived in this timeline. But now the feeling hit her so strongly that her stomach cramped with nausea. She might have fallen if she hadn’t already been on her knees. She heard someone retch behind her. Jamie, maybe.
“Whatisthat?” Aaron choked out.
“It’s the sky,” Tom said. “Therealsky.”
“I don’t understand,” Joan said.
“There’s an Ali seal up there,” Tom said. “But it has a point of failure. If you look at it from just the right angle, you can see the world as it truly is.”
“What does thatmean?” Nick said.
Tom looked over at him. “Your counterpart spoke about damage—of running out of time to stop Eleanor. I think he was talking aboutthis. This world is riddled with holes, and the damage is only getting worse.”
“What?” The hairs rose at the back of Joan’s neck as her understanding reframed the view above them. She’d thought she was looking at pale cobwebs in a night sky, but now she realized that the cobwebs were outlines of holes. The blackness above was the void itself: the vast emptiness that existed beyond the timeline.
She realized then why she’d been sensing decay and corruption since she’d arrived in this timeline.
