The best time for illegal dumping was 2 AM on a Tuesday.
Mika had learned this the hard way. Three tickets. Two court dates. One very angry boss. Tuesdays were when the city workers changed shifts. For twenty perfect minutes, nobody watched the old part of town. If you knew the back roads through the factory district, you could slip in and out like a ghost.
Tonight's load was extra gross.
Mika wrinkled his nose as another wave of rotten smell hit him through the truck's window. Two hundred pounds of spoiled mangoes from Fresh Harvest Company. The whole shipment had gone bad during delivery. Something about the cooler breaking down. By the time anyone noticed, the fruit had turned into a mushy, stinking mess that cost too much to throw away properly.
That's where Mika came in.
"Three hundred dollars,"
Mr. Chen had said earlier, sliding the envelope across his desk.
"You know where to take it. You know when. And Mika?"
"Yeah?"
"This is your last chance. Get caught again and you're done. Not just fired. Blacklisted. No delivery company in the city will hire you."
Mika had taken the money without talking. Three hundred dollars meant another month of rent. Another month of keeping his little apartment and custody of Jamie. Another month of not calling his aunt to admit that maybe he couldn't handle raising a twelve-year-old alone.
The truck hit a pothole. Something in the back made a wet, sloshing sound that Mika tried not to think about.
Eleven minutes to the fountain. Seven minutes to dump. Two minutes to get away.
Easy.
The factory district was dead. Empty warehouses with broken windows. Cracked streets with weeds growing through them. Streetlights that hadn't worked in years. This part of the city had been dying for a decade. Businesses moved out. People followed. Now it was just rusty metal and spray paint.
And fountains.
Mika had never understood why there were so many fountains here. Fancy ones carved from expensive-looking stone. Someone said a rich guy built them in the 1920s to make the neighborhood pretty. The fountains outlasted everything else.
Most were dry now, filled with trash and dead leaves. But the one Mika used—the one behind the old textile factory on Margrave Street—still had water. Clear, cold water that bubbled up from somewhere underground. Mika had found it six months ago, and it had been perfect ever since.
The fountain was big enough to hide the truck. Quiet enough that nobody ever came by. Deep enough that you could dump a lot of stuff and it would just disappear down the drain. Mika tried not to think about where it went. Some old sewer probably. Not his problem.
The headlights cut through the darkness as Mika turned the corner. There it was—the fountain, exactly like always. Round, maybe fifteen feet across, with carved stone figures around the edge. Angels or demons or something. Hard to tell. Their faces were worn smooth from age and weather. In the middle, water bubbled up from a stone pillar and spilled down into the pool.
Mika parked but left the engine running. Quick in, quick out.
He jumped out and went to the back of the truck. The smell hit him when he opened the door. His eyes watered.
"Oh God,"
Mika muttered, pulling his shirt up over his nose.
The crates were heavy, sloshing with liquid fruit. Mika grabbed the first one and dragged it to the fountain's edge.
"Note to self,"
He said to nobody.
"Next job, be a brain surgeon. Or a pro gamer. Anything that doesn't involve rotten fruit."
He didn't let himself think too much. Thinking led to feeling guilty, and guilt didn't pay rent.
He tipped the crate.
Rotten mango goop poured out in a thick brown stream. It hit the water with a wet SPLAT. The smell got worse. Mika gagged and turned away.
Four crates total. Four trips. Four waterfalls of spoiled fruit into the fountain.
By the fourth crate, Mika's arms were shaking and his shirt was soaked with sweat. He dumped the last load and stepped back, breathing hard.
"Done,"
He said.
"Never again. I swear, never again."
He said that every time.
Mika was heading back to the truck when he noticed something weird.
The fountain was glowing.
Not much. Just a faint blue-green light in the water, like someone had dropped glow sticks in. The light pulsed, getting brighter each time.
"What the—"
Mika moved closer and looked down. The rotten mango was still there, floating in clumps. But underneath, something else was happening. The water was moving wrong. Spinning and folding in ways that water shouldn't move. It hurt to look at.
The stone figures around the fountain were glowing too. The same blue-green light came from their worn stone eyes.
"Okay,"
Mika said slowly, backing up.
"That's new. Time to go."
He turned toward the truck.
The fountain exploded behind him.
Not fire. Light. Pure, blinding light that turned night into day. Mika stumbled forward, hands up to block his eyes. He felt the blast hit his back like a shove.
And then came the pull.
It started gentle, like standing too close when a subway train passes. But it got stronger fast. It grabbed Mika and yanked him backward. Toward the fountain. Toward the light.
"No, no, no—"
Mika grabbed for the truck's door handle. Missed. Tried again. His fingers touched metal, then slipped off. The pull was too strong now.
His boots scraped on the gravel as he got dragged back.
"This is NOT how I die!"
He hit the fountain's edge hard. Pain shot through his hip. The water below wasn't water anymore. It was a swirling hole of light and color and shapes that shouldn't exist. A hole in the world that went somewhere else.
Somewhere that probably didn't have good Wi-Fi.
Mika grabbed the fountain's rim with both hands. His fingers dug into old stone.
"Not today!"
He shouted at the swirling light.
"I have rent due! I have a little sibling! I have—"
The stone crumbled under his hands.
"—a very bad feeling about this!"
Mika fell.
Into the light.
Into the impossible.
His last thought before the universe turned inside out was:
Jamie is going to kill me.
And then there was only screaming wind and light and the feeling of falling up, down, sideways, and through colors that didn't have names.
Somewhere in the chaos, Mika had time for one more thought:
I really should have become a brain surgeon.