Thirty-seven
“Why’d you do it, Starkey? You knew the Kreak would attack if you used the Charge. You never should have—”
“Come on now, Graham. You don’t think I did that?” Starkey sat in a wide library stocked to the limit with books. He lowered the book he’d been reading. Great Expectations. What a joke. Were great expectations what Starkey had when he’d started this whole mess?
Graham stuffed his hands in his pockets and ignored the books, ignored the lamps, the bear rug before the fireplace. He ignored the memories this reignited, how much Starkey had loved old books, how he’d had a collection of them back home.
“Didn’t you?” Graham snapped. “Gingham Range is a pile of ashes. Victoria’s mom is hurt. Rosalind Baxter is hurt. The shore watcher died. That one girl, Dahlia, disappeared. Victoria told me about that Powell lady who died. How long are you going to let it go on? These lives are on your hands, Starkey! You’re not helping these people, you’re damning them. You’ve got them trapped in this fake existence, in a world they can’t leave if they wanted to. What are you going to do if they figure out what’s going on? That you’re the one who’s doing it?”
Starkey’s nostrils flared. He slammed the book to the carpet and rose to his feet. He was tall, but not as tall as Graham.
“I tell you, boy, I didn’t use it!”
“Then how did this happen?” Graham shouted. If Starkey was telling the truth, that could only mean one thing. “Things are out of your control, Starkey.”
The old man shook his head. Graham was shocked. He had to have heard the siren or looked out his window. How could he be so in denial about all of this?
“There are two of them now. And if what you said is true, that you didn’t trigger this attack, then you’re losing control of them.”
“You know how I found Oscar?” Starkey said. “He’d just gotten beaten up by his gang, his supposed family, for wanting out. He was a bloody pulp on the sidewalk, and when I tried to help him, he pushed me away. The kid almost died, Graham, and yet he held so much devotion to the people who nearly killed him he refused to speak against them. Enid Digby was dying of a drug overdose. Jarvis was once an Air Force pilot, but the government refused to uphold his VA benefits and he was living on the streets, begging for money from anyone who passed his way.”
Graham ignored this. Starkey couldn’t argue his way out of it this time. He couldn’t keep trying to justify it. Not anymore.
“If you don’t destroy the Kreaks, everyone in this town will die.”
Starkey’s nostrils flared. “If I do destroy them, we’re all stuck. No one will be able to enter. No one will be able to leave.”
“Then you’ve got to let everyone go.”
“No,” Starkey snapped. “I saved these people. I brought them here to a safe reality where they could have a good life.”
“They’re not safe here!” Graham shouted.
“Everything I’ve done here will be lost. If you go back to Chicago, you lose Victoria. Do you really want that?”
Graham’s argument slipped from his lips.
“She’ll lose herself, boy. You’ll be condemning her—and everyone else—to their misery.”
“She’s already miserable,” Graham said, pitying Starkey. Could he really be that blind? “Most of these people here are. Admit it, Stark, your experiment was a failure. You’ve ruined these people’s lives instead of saving them.”
Starkey’s lip curled. With a roar, he upturned the table beside his chair, his shoulders rising and falling from the exertion.
Graham took several careful steps toward him, hands raised. “I know it’s the last thing you want to hear. And I’m sorry. But you know I’m right, Stark. You know it.”
Starkey blinked. Over and over. It was silent for so long Graham opened his mouth to go on when the old man finally nodded.
“You’re right,” he said, sinking into the chair beside the overturned table. “Blast it all, you’re right, boy.”
“People will understand. It might be difficult, but at least the Kreak won’t be there to keep killing them.”
Starkey stared off at his study, trapped in whatever thoughts were tumbling through his mind. “It will be impossible to send them all back through at once,” he finally said, his voice tepid.
Graham sat too and stared right at him until Starkey’s blue eyes returned to his. “So we pick a few at a time.”
Starkey shook, looking older than Graham had ever seen him. He closed his eyes and rested his hand against his head as if doing difficult calculations.
“See to it, my boy. Select a few people you think should go first. You should go with them. Be there to help them transition.”
“When?” Graham asked. “When do they leave?”
“Midnight tonight.”
Tonight. His chest tightened.
“I’ll alert the Nauts to be at the ready,” Graham said. “And when it’s all over, we destroy the Gateway. It’s how it has to be.”