CHAPTER 29

IF THIS IS YOUR FIRST VISIT TO THE REDEEMER’S LAW PROJECT, YOU ARE COMING INTO THE STORY ALREADY IN PROGRESS. YOUR EXPERIENCE HERE WILL BE FAR LESS CONFUSING IF YOU USE THE CHAPTER INDEX ON THE RIGHT TO GO BACK TO THE INTRODUCTION. OR AT LEAST TO THE PROLOGUE.

CHAPTER 29

At first Diedra couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or not. She blinked several times, touched her eyes with her fingers, and decided they were open. She stared wide-eyed into total darkness.

She called out, “Where am I?”

The words echoed in a manner that reminded her of the gymnasium at her grammar school. The gray concrete walls and the polished wooden floor had flung sound back to her much the same way her voice returned to her now.

She stood and quickly patted herself. All her clothes were in place, and she couldn’t find any injuries. The air was cool and slightly musty.

“You’re safe,” said a voice from the dark.

A candle lit ten feet directly in front of her. Matt Sinclair stood behind it, holding a match, which he slowly raised to his lips and blew out. He watched her intently, but she didn’t think there was any malice in his expression. She said, “Matt—”

He calmly pulled a black mask over his head. Diedra stared into the solid white eyes.

Without surprise, she said, “You’re the Redeemer.”

He faltered, pulled the mask back off. “...You knew?”

She hugged herself and glanced around, tried to get a better feel for where they were. “Well, you’re no Bruce Wayne. Too much weirdness. Anybody could’ve figured it out.”

Matt shuffled his feet self-consciously. “I haven’t been at it that long.”

“Where exactly are we? And how’d we get here?”

He came forward, holding the mask in both hands. He’d put the suit back on, but not the boots, and she wanted to giggle at his white tube socks. “That’ll take some explaining.”

“I bet it will. Where’d you come from, out of the coat closet like that? What, you’ve got mirrors set up or something?” She reached out and took the mask from him, felt of it as she spoke. “And Jesus, Matt, was that theatrical enough back there? You scared me to death!”

“Sorry. Look, I only brought you here because I wanted to tell you about, uh, this.” He gestured at the black suit. “Would you mind going back to the apartment? To talk, I mean?”

“No, I’d—”

She stopped.

It clicked with her, then, that what had happened was no illusion with dry ice and mirrors. She remembered, the way she sometimes remembered fragments of a dream minutes after she’d awakened from it. The hole, the doorway opening up. The cold inside.

Matt took her arm, and she had time enough to say, “Oh shit” and grit her teeth before it happened again.

# # #

About an hour later Diedra sat on Matt’s couch, sipping a cup of hot chocolate.

Matt sat at the opposite end with a mug of hot tea, dressed in a blue sweatsuit. Diedra shook her head.

“And...you said the cold, that was...”

“It happens every time I do it. Near as I can tell, the farther I go, the colder it is where I’ve just left. I think—I think it’s some kind of endothermic reaction, like I’m pulling energy from around me to give myself the power to do it. So it gets cold.”

“All right...so what happens if you take a running start? You come out moving on the other side? So you could, like, all of a sudden come shooting out of the shadows?”

Matt’s eyebrows drew together. “Actually, ah, I never really tried that.”

Diedra scowled at him. He shrugged.

“Okay. Fine. But I want to see you do it. Not in any closets, or behind closed doors. I want to see you do it, right in front of me.”

“What, taking you to the basement didn’t convince you?”

“I don’t know what that was, but I do know if I’m going to believe what you’re saying, I want to see it myself. With these eyes. On my terms.”

He set his mug down on the coffee table. “Well, that’s just it, that’s why I do it where nobody can see it. It has to be in the dark.”

“Oh, that’s convenient. Why? Why in the dark?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never known. That’s just the way it is.”

She pursed her lips and thought about it for a while. “All right. We can deal with that.” She looked around, considered. “Here. I’ll turn off the overhead lights, and—get up.” They got off the couch, and she shoved the coffee table over so that it touched the seat cushions. “Now.” She peered under it. “It’s nice and dark under there. If you can really do this, this stuff you’ve been telling me, I want to see you crawl under that coffee table and come out somewhere else.”

Matt wrinkled his forehead again. “...Okay. Where?”

“Anywhere, I don’t know! Here, okay, how about this.” She went to his kitchen, climbed up on the counter and sat down with her legs folded. “All right, I can see you get under the table from here, and, uh, switch off that lamp there, would you?”

Matt obligingly turned off a floor lamp in one corner of the living room. “Good. Now there’s lots of nice dark shadows right here behind the counter. So crawl under the table, and then come out here, right below me. No sleight-of-hand. No secret doors.” She set down the hot chocolate and crossed her arms, her jaw set. “And you can let me know when you get tired of lying there on the floor.”

Matt walked over and looked behind the counter, then went back to the couch and the coffee table. Diedra watched him closely. He set his mug of hot tea on the table and got down on the floor. “I feel really stupid,” he said, and pulled his knees up to his chest as he scooted underneath.

Diedra started to say, “How you doing down there?” when she noticed the hot tea on the coffee table no longer sent up any steam. A wave of cold air touched her cheek, and Matt rolled out of the shadows below her and stood up in the kitchen.

He said, “How was that?” and had to catch her as she pitched backward off the counter.

# # #

Diedra sat and shivered. Matt stood a few feet away from her and tried to think of something to say, but eventually decided to wait for her.

A few minutes later she said, “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.”

Carefully, Matt said, “What?”

She looked up at him. “The—all the things—like when I was a kid. Wait a second. Okay. All the stories I used to read, the movies I used to watch, when something really bizarre happened. I’d always wonder what I’d do, y’know, if I got faced with something like that. And now here it is. You just teleported across the room.”

He shrugged, wordless.

“I just...I feel like somebody just proved the world is flat. Oh my God.”

She shook her head and hugged herself and shivered some more. He walked over and sat beside her.

“You’re the first person who’s known. Well, almost the first. I didn’t know how you’d take it.”

“How I’d take it! Jesus God, it’s... I don’t know, I don’t know! I mean, of course, you just did it, right there and I saw you do it, but... Oh, Jesus. How...how did...what...you were born able to do this? What caused it? What’s...” She trailed off.

He touched her face, lightly, and turned it toward him. “I’ll tell you. All of it. But I want to take you somewhere.” She tensed, and he quickly said, “In a car, in a car, don’t worry.”

“Where? Where are we going?”

He went into his bedroom for a couple of minutes, and came back out in street clothes, carrying a long gray raincoat. “I want you to meet someone.”


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