Modus Vivendi

002 one abyss will lead to another

SIXTEEN YEARS AGO.

EUROPE

✷

Sabine remembered the first dream.

Not the first in her life, but the first one she felt, the way one woke to sunlight and saw out of their own eyes themselves lifting their own hands, the way one scared themselves hearing the sound of their own voice coming out of their own mouth for the first time. The way her father told it, years later and only when triangulated by his daughters, it was as if he hadn't expected her to remember. It was so long ago, he would say, in that grave voice of his, one that conveyed only reluctance to speak and betrayed no emotion, and you were only six. How can you know anything? But she did. Vivid as the sun on the horizon, and, unlike the others that would come to her much, much later in slivers, she saw it all playing back each time. The first time Sabine felt wide awake.

There was no telling what time it was, no clocks in the compound except for the ticking in her chest, but the darkness that blanketed the facility granted them refuge in its umbrage as her father, clutching a whimpering Serenity to his chest, ushered them toward the edge of the compound. It was a place suspended in stasis, sequestered between branches of universes, on the outside looking in, not a part of but hidden between. A place unknown and unknowable, forgettable as a coin slipping between the folds of a sofa, or an odd sock lost in the washing machine. A shadow of a shadow of a shadow. A place that left no fingerprints on the multiverse, because it did not exist. Not technically, anyway. In the distance, on the other side of the building, Sabine could hear the dogs barking, their menacing growls shredding the darkness, the miasma of carrion on their breath, gnashing teeth and flecks of torn flesh and the promise of painful death.

They couldn't have chosen a worse time to leave. In the middle of a blizzard tearing through the middle of the night, the car taking each bend on two wheels, the icy road slipping out from under them every odd second. Her father fought to keep control of the car, but the faster they went, the more the car fishtailed. The windshield was a blur of ghostly street lights and snow swimming in the glass.

As the car jolted over a bump in the long strip of road, her mother let out a hiss and rubbed her troubled shoulder. Sabine shut her eyes and breathed in slowly, inhaling the smell of baby powder, the must of old car seats, and the overwhelming sting of camphor and menthol slathered over sweet green tea—her mother's scent, an odd concoction of perfume and Tiger Balm permanently smeared over her bad shoulder, herbal and healing, her touch an antidote to all the little troubles that plagued her children's little lives. The knot in her chest loosened. When Sabine opened her eyes once more, her father's grey-eyed gaze flicked to the rearview mirror. When she met his gunmetal stare in the reflection, a shadow of some unchained emotion passed over his face, too fleeting to pin down, too foreign for Sabine to recognise. And when she blinked, Altan flinched.

Thinking back on it, Sabine wondered often about this moment. What had he seen? Of course, being five and a half then, she dismissed it as if she hadn't noticed the shutter in his expression.

Sabine strained against the seat belt lashing her tight against her seat, and reached across to the rickety car seat where her sister's small face—blotchy from crying—peered out from beneath a bundle of pink cloth. Chest heaving, her faint hiccups only just beginning to subside, Serenity blinked up at her older sister, unshed tears glistening in her dark eyes as Sabine lifted a corner of her puffer coat and wiped the congealing snot from beneath her button nose. Sabine prodded Serenity's cherubic cheek teasingly, and let Serenity curl her gummy fingers around her pinky.