by Seth Fishman
“This is the home of my clan.” Straoc seems smug, if I’m reading him correctly. He’s hard to pin down, I realize. He seems important, entrusted as he is with bringing us back, and yet still as eager as a kid to amaze us. Here he is, bragging about his people. “We are one of the most ancient lines, traced back to the birthing waters of our universe. And this is a First Tower, one of the homes of a Keeper of the Three.”
I’m guessing that Arcos has another First Tower. And Feileen did too, before she was killed. Seats of power for the Keepers, I suppose. Something to be proud of.
There are Keepers here, walking, sitting, enjoying the day, just like you might see students doing on campus in April between classes. Birds with glimmering feathers zip above us and I think I see a four-legged something lounging in the grass, more doggish than dog. I almost expect to see red plastic cups filled with beer or Frisbees lofting through the air. The Keepers all look our way, casting furtive glances, though there’s a younger-looking Keeper, with a shock of blue hair, sitting in a circle and full-on staring. The Keeper to her left covers her eyes with his hands, blocking her view of us. As if our looks could kill.
I want to ask Straoc about her but a couple of men, both in blue billowy shirts and mustard-yellow jackets over blue jean–like pants, approach carrying bowls of water. They’re smiling, something we haven’t really seen much of down here. They’re the opposite of the Keepers we saw at the Exchange. “Welcome and drink,” they say in unison. One has black hair in a bowl cut with narrow eyes, and the other has blond curls with wide cheekbones.
Straoc nods, and we drink. The water gives me a buzz of energy and a pulse of warmth that goes right through my head.
“Wow,” Rob says, apparently feeling the same thing. “Like a bump of caffeine.”
One of the Keepers—the one with dark hair—reaches out tentatively and touches Jo’s blond hair. Jo manages not only to not cringe, but even to smile. The perfect diplomat.
“You have very small eyes,” the hair toucher says.
“Breacha,” Straoc warns.
“Is it true that for half of every cycle you must hide?” the other asks, looking at me for answers. He’s got an earring—a thin chain that snakes in and out of the lobe.
“Hide from what?” I ask.
“From the burning.”
“The sun?” Rob asks.
“That is not the way of it,” Straoc admonishes, and the two cower back, as if in trouble. “Keeper Randt speaks better than that. You take your moments to speak to Topsiders and you ply them with questions of superstition?” Straoc had untied us while we drank, and now he hooks my arm and pulls us along. “Enough, you two. Go tell your friends of your speaking with Topsiders and leave us.”
We keep walking through the grass, no other Keeper brave enough to approach.
“So each building has its own clan?” Jo asks after a while, stroking her hair absentmindedly.
“Yes, that is correct,” Straoc says. “Come now,” he continues. “I am sure you are exhausted. Let us go to your chambers, where you can rest.”
I catch Rob’s and Jo’s eyes. Taking a nap is the last thing I can imagine doing right now.
Straoc guides us down a lovely path toward a gazebo-like structure and invites us to sit. There’s a Keeper standing in the corner, a reedy man who refuses to meet my eyes, but peeks at our feet. “These are our chambers?” Rob asks. Straoc doesn’t respond, and so, reluctantly, we take a seat. As soon as we do, the gazebo shoots into the air, surprising me but terrifying Rob, who was never the best with heights. He yelps. I fear the dark; Rob fears heights; Jo stepping immediately to look over the edge, fears nothing.
The reedy Keeper pushes a few buttons, kind of like an elevator operator. Maybe exactly like that.
“Mia,” Jo says, practically dangling from the side. Oh, it’s great to be a high diver. “Come see!”
Battling my own beating heart, I stick my head out and take it all in. I can’t see the actual mechanism of the elevator, so there must be a cable or something pulling us up. We ride smoothly, quickly, passing balcony after balcony catching glimpses of Keepers through open windows going about their daily business, whatever that means here. Jo points to one woman who is hanging glowflowers upside down from a line, as if to dry them. They shiver and sparkle and remind me of Christmas.
I look down, and shouldn’t have. We’re high up. Thirty, fifty stories, I don’t know. I grab Jo’s hand.
“Aww,” she says, making a funny face. “You should go sit with Rob and be scared.”
“Watch it,” Rob says, his eyes closed. “I know where you live.”
“I do not know where you live,” Straoc says eagerly. “Tell me more, please. Are you of separate clans?”
“We have clans, just small ones,” I say. “Our families. We live in a small city, on campus at a school.” Only now that I’m taking time to think about it do I realize how strange it is that the Keepers not only understand English, but that they clearly developed in a similar way to us. Being stuck down here for as long as they have, the chances are crazy small they’d be anything like us.
“How small are families?” he asks.
“Oh, they can be big, but usually only a few kids and a mom and a dad.” I pause. Next to me, I can feel Jo take a deep breath, no doubt thinking of her father.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Jo says, obviously resigned to being here. “A whole world, like Atlantis.” She’s quiet for a moment, and because I’m staring at her, I catch the quiver of her lip. “It’s like all of this has happened for a reason.”
All of this, for her, has to mean the death of her dad. But Mr. Banner didn’t die in some freak accident. It was an avoidable tragedy, it was Sutton’s fault, but now we’re here, witnessing the impossible. She can finally have a why for his death. Jo sniffs, tucks her knees to her chin. The floors whiz by; none of us say a thing.
And then we stop. It’s so sudden and soft that I don’t realize we’re not moving until Straoc steps off onto a colorful mosaic of tiles. We’re at the penthouse, so close to the golden domed ceiling that I could touch the curve. The balcony is large, enclosed like a sultan’s foyer, with two trees on either side and a couple of bronze gas lamps. I take Jo’s hand and help Rob up. It’s only when I get to the edge that I realize the mosaic on the floor is of a familiar image. It’s like a bridge made of stone, held up by two rows of evenly spaced arches rising higher and higher into the air. But it’s too thin to be a bridge, and there’s water pouring off the end.
“What’s going on?” Rob says in disbelief.
“No way that’s the aqueduct,” Jo adds, but it sure looks like the aqueduct, the one we broke into and blew up to keep Sutton off our trail. In fact, the image shows what I’d expect the aqueduct to be now, after I blew it up. My mind flashes to the woods, and I wonder where all the water’s draining now, if we’ve flooded the whole forest. Or if it’s frozen into a mini-pond, an iced waterfall.
“Who made this?” I demand.
“Made what?” Straoc asks, confused. He’s moved past the mosaic and is standing near a great wooden door, the entrance to the floor.
“The tiles, that image,” Jo exclaims, flustered. “How do you know what the aqueduct looks like? How is it here? What the heck is going on?”
Straoc frowns, then answers very slowly. “I have paid no notice to this before.” And with that, he beckons us through the door.
6
JIMMY
JIMMY’S RUNNING. HE’S HOLDING A WALKIE-TALKIE IN one hand and Odessa’s hand with the other. The corridors are gray and long and with lights on the floors. Runway lights. Now that he’s moving fast enough, he feels like a plane about to take off.
“Turn left,” Veronica crackles through the walkie-talkie.
It all looks the same.
There are no more gunshots, but in some ways, that’s sca
rier. With gunshots, Jimmy reasons, he at least can hear where Sutton and his people are. Without gunshots, they could be anywhere. Even Veronica can’t track all their movements, and according to her, they’ve split up. Some are using the pump to get as much water out of the well as possible. Others are moving down the hallways, methodically kicking in doors, looking. And Sutton, with two armed cronies, is marching straight to Veronica’s station. That’s what she said anyway.
“Okay, now enter the code into the second door on the right,” she says, and spits out a number. Repeats it so he can get it right. It beeps green, and Odessa opens the door. She’s been quiet since they left, but there’s not much to talk about. Still, it’s a little unlike her.
“Close the door!” Veronica screams, oddly insistent, and he backpedals and slams it. He can hear the lock engaging.
“Great,” she says. Jimmy hears a muffled thud in the background. Not a gunshot. Something else.
“What’s that?” he asks.
“Sutton. He’s outside my door, but never mind. Just hurry. Now you’re going to go through a pair of sliding doors and I want you to head to the left, not the right. The right will take you to somewhere you don’t want to be. Once you’re through the door, put on the suits as quick as you can. But be thorough, check each other’s seals.”
Jimmy looks around, and sees that they’re in a lab. There are microscopes and emergency showers and sinks. There are lab coats on the wall. Jimmy goes through a pair of sliding doors and hits a T junction hallway, except instead of a dead-end wall in front of them, it’s windowed, and through the windows he sees cages upon cages. Dogs and cats and mice in aquariums. Some are bouncing around, others aren’t moving at all. He’s too far away to see if they are sick, or covered in sores, or bleeding.
“I don’t like this,” Odessa says. The dogs, as if they heard her, begin to howl.
“Me neither,” he admits. He knows that this is what happens in a lab, but he has a German shepherd and a Siamese back home and he loves them and now he can only think of them aging to death and dying.
To the right, another door, one with a big bright red 4 painted on it.
To the left, a door with a 2, painted blue. They go that way, press a big red button and the door lifts up, like for a garage. And inside, sure enough, suits. Not hazmats, but clunkier, made of a thick blue plastic that seems sturdier than those the soldiers wore at Westbrook.
Odessa hesitates, so he takes a suit down for her and helps her in, piece by piece. Veronica’s been quiet, which means either she’s being very patient or she’s in trouble. Either way, they take their time, right foot, left foot, zip and seal. The helmet is part of the suit, so all you have to do is zip, Velcro, zip, Velcro. Two layers of suit, three layers of gloves, all built in together.
“If this is for level two, what do you think the suits look like in level four?” Jimmy says, and is gratified to see Odessa smile.
“Probably Michelin Man costumes.”
“And why do they even bother? They have the water around. They can heal themselves from any virus or whatever they get.”
“They’d need too much,” she replies, her voice muffled, her breath leaving a small cloud of fog. “If they had to use it every time they left the room, they’d have run out years ago. They were almost out when we showed up, remember?”
They stand looking at each other, Odessa in her new body, locked away in a mobile plastic kit like an action figure still in its case. There’s a lock of her red curly hair covering one of her eyes, and Jimmy has to fight the urge to reach out and try to move it, even with her helmet on.
“You ready?” he asks.
She snorts. “For what? I have no idea what we’re doing.”
He makes a face. “Veronica?” he says. The walkie-talkie is awkward in his clunky hands. She doesn’t respond. He tries again. Nothing.
“No way,” Odessa says.
“Maybe she’s doing something.” Jimmy lifts the walkie-talkie to try again, but Odessa bats his hand down.
“No,” she hisses. “If someone got to her, then you’re just telling them where we are.”
“But we’ll be on the monitors.”
Odessa shrugs, a barely noticeable gesture in the suit. “If I were Veronica and Sutton was trying to get in, the last thing I’d do is keep the monitor focused on places I didn’t want him to see.”
“But we don’t know that!” Jimmy says.
“What do we know?” she asks. “We know she sent us here. We know to put on these suits. And we know that she mentioned monkeys. So let’s go with what we know, okay?”
Jimmy takes a few breaths to calm down. The suit isn’t helping. But Odessa’s right. He glances up at a camera along the wall, then jumps and knocks it to the right. He smiles at her, proud of himself, and she smiles back, which is all the reason he needs to keep going.
• • •
They leave the door open and quickly discover that this part of the lab is better equipped. Bigger rooms, crazier machines. Electron microscopes are nothing when compared to the MRI room. Mr. Kish wasn’t joking; the Westbrook alums funded this place. It’s better than a hospital. They open doors and check out each room, not sure what they’ll find or where they’ll find it.
At the far end of the hallway, past a number of small white rooms, some with dentist-style chairs, others with silver tables, and one with a colorful carpet and kid’s toys, there’s a thick, heavy-set door. A crosshatched window is fixed three-quarters of the way up, and through that Jimmy can see more cages, bigger ones. Small hands poke through the cages and hold on to the bars.
“This must be it,” he says to Odessa.
“Now what?” she replies.
“I have no idea. That’s what Veronica’s for.”
“So, are the monkeys, like, really sick or something? Is that why we have to wear these suits? Are we supposed to hope they find and bite and infect Sutton and his men?”
Jimmy cranes his neck, trying to see more of the monkeys. He realizes that he doesn’t recognize the type, that aside from apes like chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, and monkeys like um, baboons, he’s pretty clueless.
“Dess,” he says, trying to work out the logic while he speaks, “if these monkeys are testing water that’s supposed to stop killer viruses, then it makes sense that they would have killer viruses here too, right? Like Ebola and Marburg. Maybe they have the virus somewhere in here, the one that made us like this . . .”
“Yeah,” she replies, opening the door, apparently ready to get this over with. “But this is minimum security. I bet these ones are safe and the infected ones are past the door marked with the big four.”
“Then what are we supposed to do with them?”
“Just trust Veronica, okay?” Odessa replies, looking over her shoulder. “She got us this far.”
Jimmy clamps up, annoyed. He’s never liked following orders.
Inside, the room’s bright and the noise is loud. The monkeys, agitated, move back and forth in their cages, which are bigger than he thought—they’re set back into the wall a good ten feet. They’re smaller than chimps, but still a decent size. Long hair on the head and neck, a light brown that turns gray as it moves down the body and toward the belly. Several of them are screaming, baring their teeth. A few of the bigger ones stare, wide-eyed, mouths open. Like angry stoners.
“This is intense,” Odessa says, looking at the cages.
Jimmy thinks that’s code for her not wanting to be here. He’s always been good at reading Odessa. “Why don’t you go back out into the hallway and close all the doors down the corridor? We don’t want the monkeys getting lost. Go ahead of me and make sure their path is going to be straight, cool?”
“I can do that,” she says, grateful.
“But remember,” he replies, smiling at her, “they might come running, so go hide in the cor
ner, okay?”
“See you soon,” she says, gently touching the clear glass in front of his face.
And then she’s gone.
• • •
Jimmy takes stock. There’s a walk-in fridge. More steel tables. Even through his filtered mask, it smells like a vet’s waiting room. Jimmy walks to the far end of the cages, which are set atop each other, ten by five. Fifty monkeys. What did Veronica send them here for? To just wreak havoc? Jimmy supposes it will help, though he hates the idea of a monkey getting shot. Look at these guys, he thinks. Even screaming they don’t deserve that.
He stands in front of a cell marked HENRY, where a bigger guy is staring Jimmy down. He puts his hand on the lock and begins to count down from ten, giving Odessa a little more time to get ready.
At three, though, an alarm goes off. It’s loud and blaring and a spinning red light, like on a cop car, twirls above the door. It scares the crap out of him. All along the cages an additional lock springs into place, sealing the monkeys in. Jimmy looks at Henry, but the monkey just goes apeshit.
Odessa, he thinks. And runs.
• • •
She’s at the end of the hallway, her body splayed on the floor. The thick metal door at the entrance is almost down the wall, only a few feet above her, held in place by a cart. On the cart, crushed, is a microscope. The wheels on the bottom are bent off, and Jimmy can see the whole thing trembling beside her. If it gives, the door will drop and cut her in half.
“Dess!” Jimmy screams, hurrying down the hall, cursing his clunky suit.
She rolls over, waves for him to come, seemingly okay. Jimmy doesn’t even have time to feel relieved. He plunges onto the ground next to her, where she’s peering out underneath the door. The cart groans next to them.
“What happened?” he says.
“I don’t know,” she replies, checking whether something’s coming. “One minute I’m standing in the hallway, the next, this door is closing by itself. I put the cart under, but it’s not going to hold long.”