by Lydia Kang
Too easy.
Eventually, the drug concentrates at the center of the room in a sphere the size of an apple. The rich, glowing orb plummets into a tiny hole centered in the floor.
Tegg doesn’t come after me, just stands by the door, guarding my exit. He leans against the wall and lights a cigarette.
“Increase infusion to zero point two hertz,” he says, and takes a puff of his cigarette. Immediately, another gold wall of drug puffs out of the walls. Five seconds later, another puff emerges, following the first one in a parallel plane that approaches me. I time my breathing through my mouth, sucking in air and exhaling, dodging the drug. Tegg just watches me. He shakes his head, unsatisfied.
“Increase to zero point five hertz.”
Puff. Puff. Puff. They come out so much faster. I increase my breathing to match the blank spaces of air between the collapsing walls of gold. But this way, I can’t breathe deeply enough. I’m panting like an overheated dog. I accidentally inhale the plain room air through my nose, and the smells overwhelm me. There are too many people, too many problems in their bodies encoded in scent. It’s too much of everything. My timing slips. I inhale a wall of gold air.
I hear a wall of glass shattering, except there’s no glass. The tinkling of broken shards increases to a higher pitch, then changes timbre. Each shard begins to grow into a separate melody, winding around my body and playing each note to extremes of beauty I can’t stand. I’m afraid the perfection will kill me but I don’t want it to stop.
I find myself on the floor, weeping for the threads of melody that can’t possibly be produced by anything born of this earth. This is what the Sirens sounded like before the sailors drowned. And I’ve entered someplace in between, someplace more indistinct than myth. The terrifying nether region between ecstasy and death.
A shiny, tailor-made black shoe stands in front of my foot. I know it’s Tegg’s. I have enough awareness to know that I’m still in an Alucinari Room, but the sounds are too much for me to break free.
“Didn’t get very far, did you?”
When his words hit my eardrums, they transform into tones far more beautiful than those of a simple human voice. He could say he’s about to cut off my head and bake it for dinner, and it would still be the loveliest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.
“Get up.” Tegg leans over and pulls on my already tattered shirt. He tries to yank me up and I get halfway to my feet when my weight wins the tug-of-war. Tegg’s still got what’s left of my torn shirt high up in the air, but I’m still on the floor.
“Good lord, what disease is that?” he says, and I follow his eyes down to my body. My skin is all green splotches. The beautiful sounds and noises dancing in my head become muffled. They swirl and shrink, and in seconds, it’s quiet again, except for the humming of the drugged people nearby.
I survey the other people around me. The waves of gold are still coming at high frequency and everyone is still content within their personalized, hallucinatory operas. Why not me? What happened? The same thing happened when Ren pulled off my sleeve and exposed my skin.
The spots. Vera’s borrowed skin. I remember what happened to her after we went to Argent together. How she was short of breath because her body was covered. I don’t need to breathe as often so long as the green spots are exposed. And what’s more, they must be rapidly metabolizing the hallucinogens in my body, like they did with Ren.
I can feel it. There’s a sense of, I don’t know, refreshment with my skin exposed now. The hungry breaths are no longer necessary.
Tegg drops my shirt but is unsure what to do with me. His mouth is still closed. He’s not breathing through his mouth.
He’s breathing through his mask.
I don’t have time to think. I hurl my body straight toward him, the last thing he’s expecting. Tegg puts his hands out to thwart my attack. His arms are so long I can’t reach his face. Finally, annoyed at my squirming and kicking, he grabs my neck and begins to squeeze.
“I’ve had enough of this,” he says. Tegg starts to drag me to the door, but while he’s busy squeezing my windpipe, he’s not watching my hands. I reach into the back of my leggings for Caliga’s knife and flick it open with my fingertip.
I can’t stab him through his armor, but at the junction between his forearm and upper arm, a line of smooth cream-colored skin allows his elbow to bend freely. I aim carefully and stab.
“Argggggghhh!”
Tegg lets go of my neck to shelter his wound. I drop my bloody knife and jump toward his face, grabbing his mask. It’s on tight, sealed over his eyes and nose. This is no cheap Halloween deal with a flimsy elastic string holding it on. His hand swipes at my face, smearing blood across my cheek and jarring my head. Still, I don’t let go. My fingertips dig under the edges of the mask, prying it off. A hard, rocky fist finds my chest and I fly backward, skidding across the floor and leaving a wake of curling gold dust behind me.
Poufs of drug fly up at Tegg as he pats around his body, panicked. He looks like a groom at the altar who can’t remember where he stowed the rings. It’s amusing, really.
“Looking for this?” I wave the mask cheerfully at Tegg. There’s a thin nano-pore filter where the nose goes.
“Give it to me!” He starts to gallop toward me, his face parting the parallel walls of glistening dust. As I jump to my feet to run away, he’s already realized his mistake.
“Decrease . . . decrease rate to seven, no . . . ten hertz. Dammit, off, OFF!” he coughs into the clouds. It’s too late. Though no new drug pulsates out of the walls, Tegg is still surrounded by five bursts of drug enclosing him. I watch a plane of gold funnel into his mouth as he sucks in a breath. Tegg’s eyes are on me, but as he takes one more step in my direction, his hands fly to his face.
He falls to his knees, his eyes rolling back into his head as he feebly swats away the mist near his face. His armored hands slide past his cheeks to cover his ears as he crumples over to the floor. His body jerks once, twice. Then he is still. As I step over him, I hear a faint song vibrating in his throat.
“Enjoy the show,” I whisper.
CHAPTER 31
DYL MUST BE SOMEWHERE IN THIS ROOM, or close to it. I smelled the scent before I saw Tegg. But now the freesia is fainter. Even the other barrage of odors is less chaotic. Which means I’m getting better at processing them (doubtful) or Marka’s pills are already wearing off (likely).
Maybe the bio-accelerant is shortening the length of the treatments I’ve been using—a downside I didn’t anticipate. I can’t actually feel it in me. There’s no magic tingle or garish color change to tell me it’s working, only the effects. But if it’s still working, then my immunity to the Alucinari Rooms won’t last much longer.
I lift my arms and survey my green spots. Yes, they’re fading, ever so slightly. I need all the help I can get, so I kick off my shoes and peel away my black leggings. Now I’m perfectly dressed for a nightmare—bra, short elastiskirt, green spots, crazy hair, covered in sweat and grime.
I find Caliga’s knife and tuck it in my waistband, then follow Dyl’s scent into the corner. A dark, very dead-end corner. I sniff up and down the angle where the two walls meet each other, and touch the walls delicately, searching for a seam or anything that could be a door, or an F-TID panel. I no longer have Ren’s stump of a finger. It was discarded in the transport, purple and useless. But I do have Tegg.
“Okay, mister. Need to borrow you for a sec.” I grab Tegg’s wrist, rough and thick with armor. With a few mighty heaves, I slide him over.
Some people enter the room, but leave since the drug clouds are gone. They couldn’t care less about us. Around here, there’s nothing odd about a half-naked, half-green girl lugging around her drugged boyfriend.
I heave Tegg’s hand up with a mighty “Oof!” and slap it sloppily against the wall. Nothing. I try over and over. Maybe there’s a finger pad higher up that I can’t reach. Maybe there is no pad. Maybe I’m just failing, as badly as I’d feared
.
Finally, my fatigued, jittery hands let go. Tegg’s body slides an inevitable course down to the floor, where he flops over, his hand smacking a dull floor tile in the corner.
Slowly, the floor hollows out beneath Tegg’s head and shoulders. The F-TID touch panel was on the floor the whole time, right under Tegg’s limp hand. His lax body tumbles down a spiral staircase opening below and a waft of air puffs up from the hidden chamber. The faded but distinct scent of freesia hits me square in the face.
My heart. It’s a little lighter just smelling that flower. I take the spiral stairs running, trying not to slip. Tegg’s drugged body, complete with lolling eyes, drapes over the lowest steps.
Above me, the floor of the Alucinari Room closes shut. It’s very dim, and I can’t see much of anything. The faint glint of metal on the ceiling highlights vicious meat hooks hanging from the ceiling in an endless line. A blur of movement comes from the corner.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Dyl? Oh my god!” I run to her, and Dyl hugs me so hard that I feel it in my marrow. We’re both crying our eyes out, soaking ourselves in salt water. My hand rubs her back and the other arm clutches her head close to my chest.
“It’s going to be okay,” I croon. Her hair is stringy and her eyes are shadowed from illness or sleeplessness. Probably both.
“I missed you so much, Zel.” Her hands claw at my shoulders, as if I’m an apparition about to slip away. “But why are you here? Micah said he’d keep you safe. He said he’d take me to you soon.”
“Micah.” Saying his very name feels like a curse. Where do I start? Everything I have to say is going to hurt. “Micah isn’t going to get you out of here—I am.” I sound more confident than I feel. All my Carus tricks are nearly spent. Marka’s trait is getting weaker already. Even with Dyl right here, I smell the freesia but I don’t understand the other ailments attacking her body. Starvation? Vitamin deficiencies?
“No.” Micah’s voice arrives before he does. A small dark spot by the door expands irregularly until it’s big enough for a person to step through. He enters, hands in pockets, as if this is nothing more than a boring social visit. The Micah-shaped hole closes again for a few seconds before it expands, and the shadow-girl in black—Blink—emerges.
“Micah,” Dyl says with precious brightness. I’m nauseated. She still feels something for this piece of roach excrement.
“Yes, love. Isn’t it wonderful. We brought your sister.” His words are sweet, but the tone is deflated and apathetic. He’s only playing the part of the concerned boyfriend.
“Look at her.” Dyl scans me from head to toe. She lifts a shaking hand. “You said she wouldn’t get hurt.”
“Well, that’s mostly her own doing, not mine.”
The shadow girl crosses her arms. “Please. Let’s do this quickly, Micah.” She has a foreign accent, maybe French. “We don’t want the police coming if there’s more trouble. The club is losing people because of the fight in the Auditory Halx.” The wraparound sunglasses are so granny, I’d laugh if I weren’t so scared. Her skin is dark and satiny, absorbing what little light is in the room.
Micah strides forward to stoop several feet in front of us, and to my disgust, Dyl drags herself away from me into his arms.
“Yes, I guess it’s time. Her trinket’s not going to work out for us anyway.”
A tiny shard forms in a hard, painful center between my lungs and my heart.
Trinket.
Ana.
No.
“Dyl . . . you’re pregnant?” I whisper. The scent. The unidentifiable odor I couldn’t recognize. Still in Micah’s arms, she twists her head back at me and nods.
“Oh, Zelia. It was my choice! Please, please don’t be mad at me.”
“Your choice? YOUR choice?” I walk up to Micah and take the knife from my pocket. “You piece of shit! She’s thirteen. She’s just a child! You should have left her alone!”
“Zel, don’t hurt him! Oh, please, don’t, don’t!” Dyl screams, and pushes me away from the person who told us everything would be okay, way back in New Horizons. The liar.
Micah glances at my knife, unconcerned. “Don’t do anything else stupid, Zelia. You’re already on SunAj’s bad side. They’re furious about what you did to Ren and Caliga.”
“Good.”
Blink continues to circle us, the outsider in the soap opera.
I don’t want to have to do this to Dyl, but I have no choice. I need her to know, and I need to hear it myself.
“How many girls are in your collection, Micah? What was I supposed to be, number three? Or number thirty? Is Blink one of them too?”
Blink stops walking, startled. “Tais-toi!” she hisses, baring her teeth.
Micah holds a hand up to Blink, turning to me. “I did like you, Zelia. More than some. I’m sorry.”
“Stop lying. You’re not sorry.”
“I am. I would tell you more. I wish it could have been different, but it’s just . . . too complicated.” Micah stops talking abruptly to look over his shoulder, as if he’s being watched. “Okay, Blink. Just make it quick. We’ve got the others upstairs to deal with.”
“Pourquoi pas vous?” she asks quietly. “Je ne veux pas le faire.”
“You know why. Remember what SunAj told you last week,” he says.
Blink sighs, the sound of someone rapidly losing an argument. “But we could use the sedative gun.”
“Lesson first, tranquilizer later. These are the orders.” Micah gives her a hard stare, and she shrinks in remorse from her little rebellion. She sighs again. “Lumières,” she commands, and immediately the room begins to dim. Dyl reaches her arms out to Micah.
“Micah . . .” she says, but he turns pointedly away.
Darkness swallows the corners of the room, spreading quickly. Blink deftly yanks off her sunglasses, and I’m shocked to see black pupils so large, they nearly take up her entire eye. She reaches into her pocket to pull out a tiny pencil-shaped thing. She’s going to attack us with a chopstick?
Dyl runs toward Micah’s retreating form when Blink shakes the stick. It quadruples in length and thickness. With a lunge and one smooth swing, she gets Dyl’s knee in mid-run.
Dyl flies forward, landing on her side, screaming in pain. Micah’s face attempts to stay impassive, but even he winces at the blow. He backs into a corner, crosses his arms, and watches as the darkness overtakes every space in the room. Micah is now completely invisible to me, as is Dyl. I can’t see my own hand in front of my face.
I go in the direction I last saw Dyl and trip over her shoulder. It’s quiet for one second, two, three. All I can hear is my own breathing. All I can smell is Dyl and her fear.
“Oh, Zel. I thought . . . I was sure he was going to help us,” she whispers.
Before I can respond, the strike comes out of nowhere. It hits my left thigh so hard that I choke on the pain. Before I can catch a breath, another blow comes across the left part of my back.
“Stop it!” Dyl screams. “Stop it, Blink! Please!”
I roll on the floor to put a few feet between us and concentrate on my breathing. Marka’s trait is my only weapon now. I take a huge inhalation through my nose, and let it simmer in my brain, finding what I need to know.
Cinnamon. I smell it. Cinnamon, on oatmeal, with crumbles of brown sugar and a river of thick cream. It must have been delicious. She ate two bowls of it, it seems.
As soon as I’m certain, I lunge. The concentration of her scent tells me she’s six feet away, and I don’t even aim for her face. I aim for her ankles. Her skinny legs are in my hands and I yank them forward. She curses in French, falling backward with a crash of elbows against the floor. It’s still pitch-black, but I can punch a face in the dark when I’m holding down a scrawny neck.
It only takes one good blow to make her go limp with fear. I sit astride her, fist poised for another blow, when the lights come on so brilliantly, my eyes wince in pain.
Blink, co
wering under me, shrieks. Her black silk clothes rumple under my body.
“Mes yeux! Mes lunettes!” The light burns her huge, fragile retinas so badly, I don’t even have to hold her down. She squeezes her eyes painfully, blindly groping the floor in search of her sunglasses. Micah walks over to us, but makes no motion to help her.
“This has to stop. You’re making it worse for both of you,” he says.
I try to dodge his hands, but I’m not fast enough. He puts one hand on my wrist, another around my neck, pulling me off Blink. He doesn’t have to use his electrical trait to keep me tamed.
He doesn’t have to. He does anyway, the bastard.
The smell of my own flesh burning is horrific, acrid and disgusting. How ironic that it’s the last new scent I’ll learn. Zelia Benten, being burned alive, one handprint at a time. Marking me in places that only a day ago, Cy had touched. I gasp, wondering what’s become of my necklace. Vaguely, I remember Caliga taking it. It’s too late anyway. The necklace would only prolong the pain.
A gentle hiss issues from high above me.
And then, when I can’t take the searing jolts anymore, they mercifully stop. Something soft, wet, and foamy covers me.
“That was a big, big mistake.” Micah stands over me, covered in white foamy blebs that melt on contact with the warmth of his body. I push myself up and look for Dyl. Her hand is hooked over a red lever on the wall. The fire extinguisher.
I raise my hand to grab his ankle, because I know what’s coming. I get a loose handhold on his calf before he simply walks out of my grip. He heads over to Dyl, and punches her in the abdomen with a sickening thud. Her whole body absorbs the momentum and she flies backward, hitting the wall. She tries to block his next blow, but fails.
Micah prepares one last kick. Before him, my tiny sister lies broken on the floor. Her mouth is an open scream with no sound. She is in too much pain to cry. A dark stain blossoms over the back side of her trailing shirt. I watch it, horrified, unable to move. She’s bleeding.