"LAST CALL."
The voice didn't come from a mouth. It came from everywhere. It vibrated in the remaining floorboards. It resonated in the empty glasses. It was deep, final, and absolute.
Desi froze, her arm cocked back holding the bottle.
The fire stopped moving. It froze in mid-air, like a paused video.
We all turned to the bar.
The Bartender was standing there. But they weren't behind the counter anymore. The counter was gone. The shelves were gone.
The Bartender was standing on a small island of wood in the middle of the infinite white. They were tall—taller than I remembered. Their face, usually a blur of features, was sharp and clear.
They looked like Adam. But older. Wiser. Sadder.
"You don't have to go home," the Bartender said, their voice echoing like a church bell. "But you can't stay here."
The Bartender snapped their fingers.
It wasn't a loud sound. It was the sound of a bubble popping.
POP.
The fire vanished.
The walls of The Cortex Club burst apart like a dandelion in a hurricane.
The ceiling dissolved into mist.
The sensation of gravity shifted instantly.
"Whoa!" Desi dropped the bottle. It fell, but it didn't hit the floor. It tumbled down, down, down into the endless white below us.
We weren't in a building anymore.
We were standing on a suspended platform in the middle of a vast, gray sky. Wind whipped around us—ferocious, howling wind. It tore at my clothes. It blew Desi’s hair across her face.
"Where are we?" Greg asked, looking around. He sounded terrified. The apathy was gone, replaced by vertigo.
I looked down.
Beneath our feet was asphalt. Wet, cracked asphalt.
I looked left.
The platform extended into a long, narrow strip. There were steel cables rising up into the fog. There were rusty iron beams.
"Oh no," I whispered. I recognized the geometry. I recognized the architectural schematic.
We weren't in the bar. We weren't in the void.
We were on the bridge.
"Look," Desi whispered, pointing a shaking finger.
About twenty feet away from us, standing on the very edge of our psychic platform, was a silhouette.
He was facing away from us. He was wearing a gray windbreaker. He was soaked to the bone.
It was the man from the mirror. It was Adam.
But there was no glass separating us now. No barrier. He was right there. And beyond him, just inches from the toes of his sneakers, was a drop that went on forever.
The wind roared, sounding like a thousand backward songs played at once.
Adam shoulders shook. He let go of the railing with one hand.
"He's going to do it," Greg said. "He's really going to do it."
"No," I said, adjusting my glasses, though they were crooked and wet. "Not if I have anything to say about it."
"You can't lecture him, Leo!" Desi yelled over the wind. "Logic doesn't work on suicide! He's past logic!"
"I know," I said, staring at Adam's back. "That's why I need you."
I grabbed Desi's hand. It was cold and still glitching, but I held it tight.
"And you," I said, grabbing Greg's heavy, damp sleeve.
"What are we doing?" Greg asked.
"We're doing an intervention," I said, locking eyes with them. "But not the kind with a circle of chairs. We have to go to him. Together."
"If we get too close, we might fall," Desi warned. She looked at the drop, and for the first time, the Impulse girl looked cautious.
"If we don't go to him," I said, "he definitely will."
I took a step forward on the wet asphalt.
"Come on," I said. "Let's go buy him a drink."
ns216.73.216.10da2
and then Add to home screen.