by Nina Berry
“What do you mean?” the fat one asked, after a brief hesitation that made it clear he knew exactly what Caleb meant.
Behind us I could hear pounding on the doors of the rooms I’d locked up. “No one’s coming to help you,” I said. “Quit stalling and help yourselves.”
“We—we don’t know anything!” the fat man said. “We’re just hired workers.”
“Lazar,” I said. Behind me, Lazar walked to stand in the doorway, the light from above haloing his gold hair. “Which one’s in charge?”
“Dooley,” said Lazar.
“No, not me!” the fat one said, backing into the wall behind him. “I can’t tell you anything.”
“Reverend Lazar?” the bald scientist said. “Have you betrayed us?”
“It was the only way to save you.” Lazar paced into the room. “Tell them what you know or they’ll use your hands to open the doors without you attached.”
“Do it!” shouted the man on the floor with London looming over him.
As his friends hesitated, Caleb rolled his thumb over one of the blue buttons in his hand. “I’m told the cold takes longer, but doesn’t hurt as much. The fire is faster, but, oh”—he smiled, selecting a red button—“the pain is terrible.” He fitted the button into the band of his slingshot.
“All right, all right!” Dooley moved away from the wall. “Don’t hurt us, and I’ll take you to the mainframe.”
I relaxed slightly. Convincing him had been easier than I’d anticipated. Maybe too easy. Dooley’s eyes were shifting left and right, but I couldn’t tell if that was from anxiety or because he knew more than he was telling us.
“Excellent choice,” Caleb said, aiming the slingshot at his head. “My trigger finger’s itchy. You came this close.” He stretched the band back, released it, but as the button flew, his hand shot out to catch it in midair.
Sweat was dripping down Dooley’s temples. “I’ll cooperate.”
“Part of me wishes you wouldn’t.” Caleb cocked an eyebrow at the huge wolf still menacing the man on the floor. “Isn’t that right, London?”
She barked in the man’s face, then whirled and lunged at Dooley, coming within inches of his arm as he flinched backwards.
I wanted her to jump up and rip his throat out. I wanted to shift and sink my own fangs into his neck. The thirst for it rose up from the dark heart of me, and that was nearly the end of them all. My hand brushed the hilt of the Shadow Blade, and a still tranquility cloaked my wild thoughts.
“If you lead us into a trap, there will be consequences,” I said. “As a scientist no doubt you know the thinness of the veil here brings out the more . . . untamed side of the otherkin. Step very carefully.”
“I will,” he said, jowls shaking.
“Good. Lazar, bring the woman back in here. Dooley, out into the hallway.”
Dooley grabbed a robe from the foot of his bed as he scuttled out of the room, London at his heels. Lazar picked up the goo-bound scientist and set her gently back inside the room. We all backed out, then shut the door.
I took the Shadow Blade and sliced into the lock. Its wires hissed. Dooley saw Siku looming at the end of the hall, decorated with a rat and an eagle, and he shied away. Lazar had to catch him by the shoulders to steady him.
I kept my voice light. “I believe we need your handprint to get us through that door at the end of the hall, Mr. Dooley. If you please.”
“Okay.” He shuffled slowly toward Siku, pressing against the wall to keep a few precious inches between himself and the bear. As he squeezed past, Siku grunted and pawed the ground, claws rattling.
Dooley leaped about five feet in the air and shot forward, slamming bodily against the door and pressing back against it, as if trying to push through it. Trembling, he turned to punch in the code with shaking fingers, pressing his sweating palm up against the sensor.
The door clicked open. Dooley laid his hand upon it, but Lazar said, “You don’t move unless we tell you to.”
“The door to the mainframe’s the second on the left,” Dooley said through trembling lips.
“Anyone in there?” Caleb tossed his slingshot end over end to catch it by the handle.
“No! Not that I know of.”
I looked up at Caleb. “Come with me.” It sounded awkward and weird, too much like a command. “Please.”
His black eyes ran over me. “Just a soldier in your army, General,” he said. “Let’s go.”
My heart contracted at his cold tone. The gulf between us was larger than ever. The loss of him washed over its edge and threatened to take me over.
The veil. The veil is thin.
I remembered Morfael’s warning about the effects of Othersphere and put my hand on the Shadow Blade’s hilt. Its centering touch allowed me to straighten up and walk past the others to the door. I paused, listening at the crack for a moment, and then pushed it open.
Another thirty feet of hallway lay half-lit before me, with two doors on the right and the left. I knew Lazar had never been to this part of the complex before.
I was taller than Dooley by several inches. I put my hand on his shoulder, feeling his damp sweat soaking through his robe. “Tell us what’s behind each door,” I said.
“On the right there’s a closet and the lab.” He pointed to the first and second doors on the right. “On this side, the bathroom and the computer room.” He pointed to the left. “The mainframe’s in the computer room.”
“How do we access the tunnels of the particle accelerator itself?” Caleb asked.
“There’s a door inside the computer room, on the right-hand wall,” he said.
“The computer room, please.”
With my hand still on his shoulder, Dooley walked tentatively toward the second door on the left. Caleb walked right behind me, then Siku and his entourage, Amaris, London, and Lazar.
Dooley input the code into the lock in front of the computer room, and then pressed his hand against it. As always, the door clicked open.
“This is going better than I thought,” Lazar said.
Caleb tensed as his half-brother spoke. “A little too well.”
I agreed with Caleb, but said nothing. So far our plan had gone with unaccustomed smoothness. I was braced for the punch line.
The computer room was empty except for a series of huge computer monitors and linked hard drives on shiny metal desks, dotted here and there with a file cabinet or a chair. A palpable hum vibrated through the room like a tide, the whirr of many electronic motors keeping themselves cool and running. In the far right-hand corner lay another security door. If Dooley was telling the truth, that led to the tubes of the particle collider itself. This was the control room.
“Log on,” I said, prodding Dooley in the small of his back.
“All right, all right!” He padded in his bare feet to the largest monitor and pressed a button on the keyboard next to it. Lazar kept right by his side, gun at the ready, but his eyes on the monitor. It sprang to life, showing a space for a password. Dooley typed in a long series of keystrokes, and the view cut to a bright display of many intersecting lines of yellow, red, and blue that looked almost like a galaxy as seen through a high-resolution telescope.
Dooley went to hit another key, but Lazar caught his hand. “No. Don’t touch it again unless we tell you to.”
I walked up, and pushed Dooley back toward Siku, then stared at the monitor. “Arnaldo, I think we need you back.”
Dooley eyed the eagle nervously as he flapped off Siku to the floor and Amaris began to pull spare clothes out of her backpack. “What. What is that bird going to . . .”
He flinched and stumbled back a step as Arnaldo shifted back into his human form, using a desk for partial cover, got dressed, and walked over to examine the monitor.
“This display shows the results of a particle collision,” Arnaldo said, tapping the keys. Dooley blinked nervously at his words. “They’ve already used the collider.”
I turned to Dooley, w
ho was sweating profusely with Siku staring down at him. “So you’ve used the accelerator already,” I said. “I think it’s time you stopped lying to us, and so does Siku here.”
Dooley swallowed noisily, then nodded. “Yes, we’ve tested the collider at lower speeds, and successfully smashed particles into each other.”
“Exactly what are you planning to do tomorrow to cut us all off from Othersphere?” I asked. “And what does it have to do with our DNA?”
“DNA?” Dooley blinked, using the back of his hand to wipe off the sweat beads under his nose.
I got in Dooley’s face, pulling his watery eyes back to me. “How, exactly, does this machine cut us off from Othersphere?”
A fine tremor ran through his entire body. I could see his skin trembling. “Th—the thinness of the veil here,” he stuttered. “It changes what happens in the collider.”
Arnaldo was squinting at the display. “Pre-strangelets?” He turned to Dooley. “You think if you speed up the collisions you’ll produce actual strangelets?”
Dooley’s anxious face took on a startled look. Arnaldo had impressed him. The rest of us kept our faces still, clueless. “I—I couldn’t say, really.”
Caleb strode over to Dooley, grabbed his lapel, and shoved him up against Siku’s furry side. Dooley shrieked, trying to shrink away as Siku turned his head and gave him a big wet sniff. November let out a piping cheep very much like a laugh.
“You will say,” Caleb said, his flexible voice low and deadly. “You’ll say it now.”
“Okay, yes! Don’t hurt me. We’re almost certain we’ll produce detectable strangelets, but not the same kind other colliders might produce.”
Arnaldo was tapping the computer keys, moving into other files. Amaris handed Lazar a flash drive, and he plugged it into the hard drive to start copying the information.
Arnaldo let his hands drop from the keyboard, and when he turned around, his face was drawn and serious. “So the nearness of Othersphere will affect the properties of the strangelets,” he said. “They’ll find all matter connected to Othersphere and convert it. Into regular matter.”
“Y-yes.” Dooley dipped his head cautiously.
November let out a stream of chirps, waving her pink paws angrily. Arnaldo swiveled in the chair and gave her a condescending look. “What that means is that the particle collisions they do in this accelerator create subatomic particles called strangelets. The strangelets will be strongly attracted to particles connected to Othersphere, called O-particles. The strangelets will be drawn to the O-particles like magnets, and when they touch, the O-particles will be converted to ordinary matter. That is, matter unable to connect to Othersphere. They’ll also create more strangelets.”
“So if the Tribunal releases these strangelets into the world . . .” Caleb began.
“They’d start converting the nearest O-particles, creating more strangelets, which will find other O-particles.”
“A chain reaction,” said Lazar.
“Obliterating all O-particles from this universe.” Dooley lifted his quivering chin, his voice tinged with pride.
“Cutting all the otherkin and objurers off from Othersphere,” I said, though it was more like a question for Arnaldo.
“Yes,” he said. “Forever.”
The room got very quiet except for the hum from the computers. Arnaldo turned back and began searching the files. “Somehow this is connected to our DNA. This says something about a biological virus?”
BAM! The door burst open. Two objurers lowered tranquilizer guns at us and fired.
One dart slammed into the back of Arnaldo’s chair. The other buried itself in Siku’s side, right next to Dooley’s head.
Behind them were many more, all dressed in white.
CHAPTER 21
Arnaldo and I threw ourselves behind the nearest desk, scrambling for cover.
Lazar leveled his gun and fired. A splotch of red appeared on the forehead of one of the objurers. He dropped.
Fangs bared, London leaped for the other man in the room. He yelped as he sprawled on the ground, his gun flying.
Siku roared out and smacked Dooley in the head, sending him to the floor unconscious, face bleeding. November, shrieking, ran along Siku’s back and yanked the tranquilizer dart out of his side.
Amaris crouched to make herself less of a target and fired at a third man starting to come through the doorway. She hit him in the center of his chest.
As he fell back, blocking the men behind him, Caleb pulled out his slingshot, armed it with a red button, and fired it.
“Come forth!” he commanded, and the flying red disc morphed into a fiery sphere the size of a basketball. It struck the man Amaris had shot. The man’s clothes burst into flame. Then, with a whoosh, his entire body was engulfed in fire. The blaze swallowed up the doorway as someone yelled for everyone to step back.
“Lava spheres,” Caleb said, with a grim smile. “Better than barrels of oil and matches any day, eh, London?”
London’s muzzle was red with blood again. The man at her feet lay still. She gave Caleb a fierce, joyous bark. With a thrill, I too remembered the enormous bonfire of the first Tribunal compound we’d burned to the ground.
Stay calm, focus. This was a different compound. It was under the ground, and we weren’t done with it yet. The fiery doorway would only give us a brief reprieve.
“How’s Siku?” I asked, running up to him.
November threw the dart at Dooley’s body as I looked into the bear’s shining black eyes. They were clear.
“You okay?” I asked. The Tribunal had needed three darts to subdue him when they’d kidnapped him, but they might have improved their formula.
Siku huffed, nodding his huge head. I patted his bulky shoulder.
Beyond the burning doorway, I could hear someone yelling about a fire extinguisher. Then, without warning, water burst from the ceiling. Cold drops soaked quickly through my hair, running down my scalp, trickling underneath my clothes. I looked up to see sprinklers raining down on us. Ximon had planned his facility well.
The flames in the doorway winced and retreated. Through the smoke, I could now see figures in white.
“Get through the other door to the accelerator!” I shouted. “No time to download information. We need to destroy this thing and get out of here!” The water, at least, would take care of destroying their hard drives. But they had to have a backup server. We needed to somehow dismantle the accelerator itself.
Bangs dripping into his eyes, Arnaldo looked furious. “Dammit! That virus information was important!”
Amaris was already running to the door. “It’s locked!” she shouted.
Of course. I moved toward Dooley’s body, about to ask for help with it, but both Caleb and Lazar were already coming over. I gripped the man’s beefy shoulders as both of them came to stand uneasily near one of his legs, hesitating. I stared at them angrily. How the hell had it come to this?
Caleb’s hair lay in dark whorls across his forehead, drops circling his thick brows and clinging to his black lashes as he avoided looking at Lazar. “We should just cut off his hand.”
“He’s still alive,” I said. “No.”
Caleb glared at me. I stared right back until he looked away.
Water turned Lazar’s white shirt transparent, outlining his broad shoulders and narrow waist. He had pushed his hair, a darker gold when wet, back from his face. He put the gun in his waistband and grabbed one of Dooley’s feet, waiting for Caleb to take the other.
Caleb’s eyes flicked from Lazar to me and back again, his face set. I wanted to yell at him that now was not the time for animosity to get in the way, but I knew that would only make it worse. He turned his gaze to the doorway. The flames there were almost small enough to let the men through.
“I’ll cover the door,” Caleb said, moving swiftly to get between us and the milling men in white. He pulled a blue button from his pocket.
Lazar shot him a heated look and
grabbed Dooley’s other foot. What Caleb was doing made tactical sense, but his real motivation came from distaste for me and Lazar.
Fine. Bearing the fat man’s considerable weight, Lazar and I shuffled toward the other door. Siku followed, carrying a bedraggled November and keeping his bulk between us and the door.
The water continued to pour down, and I glanced back. The flames were dead, and the men in white zigzagged through the door, guns pointed at Caleb. Before they could fire, he snapped the button at them, calling out a single chilly note. A black cloud of power shot from his outstretched hand and struck the button.
It shimmered like a diamond, and then shook itself, stabbing outward. A wall of icicles appeared like a freezing monolith in the doorway. Shining daggers of ice speared the two men in the way, knocking them bloody to the floor.
We neared the door. Amaris hastily punched in the code as I hoisted Dooley up. Amaris grabbed the man’s wrist and lifted his hand to the scanner. The door snapped open.
Lazar and I put Dooley down, and I pushed the door open, peeking inside. No sprinklers watered the metal staircase here. It descended into darkness. My eyes adjusted to the dark as I stepped through the door, water pooling at my feet. The stairs jogged down left and right twice, ending in an unlit room with two doors on opposite sides. They didn’t have locks that required hand scanners, so I motioned Lazar forward. Siku followed, the stairs barely wide enough to accommodate his huge frame, with Arnaldo, London, and Amaris following closely behind.
I paused in pounding down the stairs to glance up, waiting for Caleb.
Lazar paused on the step above me, followed my glance, and said, “He can take care of himself.”
I didn’t say, “Except when he’s trapped in a silver cage,” or “Except when a demon thing from Othersphere takes over his body.” I’d helped Caleb through both of those situations. Just because he wasn’t mine to help anymore didn’t mean I stopped wanting to. Then I caught the swirl of his black coat as he slammed the door shut behind him. It got very dark until Amaris snapped on a flashlight, gun still in her right hand. Heartened, I continued down.
There wasn’t time to worry about which door to go through. The one on the right was locked. I drew the Shadow Blade, inserted it into the space between door and jamb and cut through as if it were pie. The knife’s edge grew more distinct as I pulled it out. It liked eating through metal. I shoved the door open to see a few more metal steps going down.