A Drop of Night

by Stefan Bachmann

  “I don’t have my phone,” Jules says. “They took my phone!”

  I go back to Hayden and kick him hard. I don’t care if it hurts; we need to move now. I see a pinprick of light spark to my left. Lilly has a key-chain light in her hand. She’s crying over it, shining it directly into her eye.

  “Oh, thank you.” I grab it from her. Point it over the walls. I see a person facing me, and for a second everything inside me shrivels in stone-cold terror. But it’s just my own reflection. The walls are mirrored. We’re in a room—a small cube—and everything from the floor to the ceiling is mirrored.

  “Help me find a way out,” I gasp. Start stumbling around, feeling along the glass for seams. I don’t know how much time we have, but the people who brought us here do. They’ll know exactly how long the red pills last, and what they plan on doing to us afterward, and if ours have already worn off they’ll be coming soon. It occurs to me that the mirrors might be two-way. Someone might be right on the other side, watching us.

  I find a seam in the corner of the chamber. Dig in my fingernails and pull. Nothing moves. I start to sweat. We’re piling over one another now, a bunch of squirming guinea pigs in a cage.

  “Anouk?”

  I swing the light around. Right into Will’s face. Crap. He raises a hand to shield his eyes. “There are chairs,” he says, and gestures.

  I spin the key-chain light.

  Yep. Two chairs, facing each other. Spindly gilt Louis XIV things, starkly out of place against the glass. Were they even there ten seconds ago?

  No, they just randomly appeared, Anouk. Of course they were there. I go to one. Try to pick it up. Maybe we can use it to go ballistic on the glass. It’s bolted to the floor. I drop down. There are thin grooves surrounding the legs, marking a square.

  I shine the light up. The ceiling is glass, but it’s not completely mirrored like the walls. I can see myself in it, my face a pale oval, eyes wide. And I can also see through it: the faintest ghost of a mural, floating just above.

  A butterfly. The wings are wide and ragged. In each one is a human eye, peering down.

  “Look up,” I say. “Look!”

  The eyes are positioned exactly above the chairs.

  “Somebody go sit in that chair. Anybody, go!”

  Jules and Lilly are hyperventilating. Will frowns at me. Frowns at the chair. Goes to it. I sit opposite him.

  Nothing happens. I don’t know what I was expecting. I guess because the chairs are the only anomaly in the room, it stands to reason that they’re somehow related to—

  A sharp clack splits the air. The chair drops under me, one inch. Lilly lets out a soft screech. My hands clench the seat, so hard my knuckles pop. I stare at Will. His chair dropped, too.

  “Um . . .” I swallow. “Okay, that was—”

  Clack. Again, louder this time, a pistol shot of sound. Clack. Clack. Something’s moving under the floor, behind the walls, all around us. Will’s eyes lock on mine.

  I open my mouth to say something, but the noise is getting louder, deafening. The whole room shudders.

  The walls are moving backward and apart. Behind them are more mirrors, and they’re moving, too, sliding one after another. An alarm goes off. A harsh, screaming siren.

  I launch out of the chair. So does Will. Nothing stops. I whip around. Lights are flickering on, dull and fluorescent. The room definitely isn’t a cube anymore. I can see down a hallway now, double-glass walls, ribbed with cables and tubes of light. The three other walls have opened onto a maze of mirrors. A labyrinth, as far as the eye can see. Abruptly, the siren cuts out.

  Nobody moves. Nobody breathes.

  I hear footsteps. Coming toward us. Several people, boots pounding, and behind them the unmistakable click-click of stilettos.

  I spin to the others. “They’re coming,” I whisper. “They’re coming!”

  Hayden is still on the floor, spread-eagled, fast asleep. I go down on one knee, slap his jaw.

  He doesn’t move.

  They’re almost here.

  12

  We drag Hayden five feet, drop him, and run. Into the maze of mirrored panels in a rustling, whispering group. The key-chain light’s weak beam is almost hidden inside the knot of legs and bodies. My heart is mashing painfully against my ribs.

  Where do we go? Where-where-where?

  Three panels in, we stop. Huddle. I look back over my shoulder. The mirrors are two-way. I can see what used to be the cube room, the chairs standing in the open now. Hayden, sprawled on the floor.

  I click off the light just as Miss Sei emerges from between the mirrors.

  She’s accompanied by four figures. Identical, tall, wearing black bodysuits and dark helmets, like motorcyclists or riot cops. The visors are dead black. Red lights thrum steadily along their jawlines, bright-dull-bright-dull, like gills opening and closing. They’re all carrying large cases.

  We need to get out of here. In two seconds they’ll realize Hayden is the only one on the floor.

  Two seconds are up.

  Run!

  But I’m rooted. So are the others. I watch Miss Sei scan the area. Her gaze rests on Hayden. And now the riot cop/motorcyclists are surrounding him and one of them is opening a case, drawing out some sort of black tubing, a wire-thin stretcher, what look like medical instruments in vacuum packaging. Miss Sei kneels next to Hayden. Lifts his head and strokes a thumb over his brow, almost tenderly.

  With her other hand she reaches into the open case. For a second I think she’s going to help Hayden. Get him onto the stretcher, take him someplace safe—

  She’s holding a nozzle. Long. Barbed. A silver needle extends from its tip like a stinger. Her mouth twitches into a smile. And now she drives the nozzle into the base of Hayden’s skull.

  His eyes snap open. He starts choking, gurgling. His back arches. He raises his arms like he wants to shove Miss Sei away, but Miss Sei pulls a trigger on the nozzle and Hayden drops, flat on the floor like a ton of concrete. The helmeted figures descend. Medical tape snaps around Hayden’s wrists. Another injection, this time from a syringe. The nozzle, attached to the tube, stays in place. They’re lifting him, black gloves digging into his neck, his arms.

  No. No, this is not happening. . . .

  I clamp my hand to my mouth. Slowly, I turn to Lilly, Will, and Jules. I want them to tell me this is a joke, that Miss Sei didn’t just stab Hayden with a gas nozzle, that she didn’t just murder him. They stare back at me.

  I look through the mirrors again. Hayden’s on the stretcher. His chest isn’t moving. His eyes are wide, glazed. Miss Sei is standing, wiping her hands on a white cloth.

  They killed him. They killed Hayden and if we were still on the floor, if we’d taken a few more minutes to wake up, they would have killed us. They’re still going to kill us.

  Miss Sei hands the cloth to one of the riot cops. “Find the others,” she says, and her voice is chillingly loud. “They’ll be slow on their feet.”

  I haven’t cried in years, but I feel like I might now. There’s a pressure building behind my eyes, burning. We need to go, I mouth silently, but I’m still staring through the double mirror. We need to go!

  The helmeted figures turn to scan the mirrors. One faces us. It can’t see us through the mirrors, can it? But it’s right there, blank visor pointed directly at me, and what if we’re visible in a reflection, what if that thing turns a quarter of an inch and sees us huddled here—

  I move back from the glass. The others do, too. It takes a step closer. Tilts its head. “Go,” I say, and it hears, and we’re running, our feet like gunshots against the floor. The mirrors seem to fan out on all sides, multiplying us a million times. A black shape cuts across our reflections.

  “Run!” I shout. “Into the corridor!” I don’t know where it goes, but we can’t get lost in this maze. I slip around one of the glass panels and sprint forward. The corridor shears away in front of me, disappearing into a point. I glance over my shoulder, get a brief
impression of the group, Miss Sei in front, marching toward us. They’re not running. It’s like they already know they have us, like we don’t have a chance. There seem to be hundreds of them, mirrored over and over again, an army of doppelgangers.

  Miss Sei raises a hand, shouts something, a vicious spike of a syllable.

  I face forward again—

  A helmet figure is right in front of me. I swing under its arm as it tries to grab me. Will hits it a second later, body slamming it against the wall. I hear glass splinter.

  “Where do we go?” Lilly screams.

  I have no idea. They’re moving faster now, passing Miss Sei. I hear their boots pounding the floor.

  We’re nearing the end of the corridor. Up ahead is a massive door, like a bank vault. A huge circle of dull blue metal. It’s slightly ajar.

  “Come on!” I yell. “Get through the door and close it!”

  Another glance over the shoulder: Will has disentangled himself from the helmet thing, is stumbling into a run. Farther back, the other helmet things are searing down the corridor, their arms chopping the air. Their speed is incredible, inhuman. Miss Sei is holding a gun now. It’s pointing directly at me.

  I reach the door and slip through the gap.

  “Get in!” I scream. “Come on!”

  I hear a shot, the ping of a bullet glancing off metal.

  Jules and Lilly dart through, start heaving against the door. Will reaches me and we grab the edge, our fingers straining. The hinges are oiled, slick as silk, but the door weighs a ton. We throw ourselves against it.

  “Don’t!” Miss Sei shouts, and now her voice is different. Scared.

  Out in the corridor, one of the helmet figures pulls ahead of the rest. It’s freakishly close, speeding toward us. I see its visor through the narrowing crack, a curved pane of night, the slice of red light throbbing along its jaw. Black fingers curl toward me, ready to grip my face, crush my skull.

  Miss Sei screams, “Don’t!” one last time, shrill and desperate.

  The door slams into place, and I jam the bar home.

  13

  We’re in a hall. Huge and cavernous, a cathedral of shadows. Lilly and Jules are racing into it. And now I’m spinning back to the door, scrabbling with the other bolts. They’re solid steel, radiating out of the center of the door, locking it into the wall. Three, four, five . . . Will and I slam them into place. I hear more locks, smaller ones clicking into place, the hiss of air as we’re sealed in. I collapse against the metal, gasping.

  There’s no other sound. Nothing from the other side of the door. Nothing in this vast new space. The silence presses around me like an actual weight, solid and icy.

  I raise my head. Jules and Lilly have stopped about twenty paces in. I can’t see a light source, but somehow it’s not pitch-black. The walls are marble, black and green. They remind me of some sort of digestive organ, darkly translucent, veins pulsing just below the surface. The ceiling is a vault of gilt and crystal. I still have Lilly’s key-chain light and I raise it, flicking it across the expanse. It catches on golden leaves, marble hands. Portraits and mirrors glimmer, chairs and Chinese-style vases twice as tall as a person. It’s like it was built for giants.

  I let my breath out slowly. “Jules?” I call out weakly. “Lilly, wait.”

  I start toward them, tripping all over myself. Jules has his hands tangled in his hair. He’s bobbing around like he can’t decide between throwing up and staring around in awe. Lilly is sobbing “Wow” over and over again.

  I glance down. The floor is a huge mosaic, fitted together out of thousands of marble tiles. Enormous wings. Human eyes.

  You’ve got to be kidding me.

  I reach Jules and Lilly. “They’re going to kill us,” Lilly whispers. She looks at me beseechingly, her face streaked with tears. “They’re insane, they—”

  I’m not listening. My brain is spinning, twisting into a single thread of thought. This is the Palais du Papillon. It’s not lost. It’s right here and it has a very twenty-first-century vault door and fluorescent-lit glass corridors. They were lying, lying from the moment they contacted us—

  Out of the corner of my eye I see Will moving toward us. He’s favoring one side of his body, limping slightly.

  “What about the expedition?” Lilly sobs. “We were supposed to pick up our gear by 9 A.M.—”

  “Lilly, there is no expedition,” I snap. “Don’t you get it? They drugged us. They tricked us into coming here. We just barely escaped being murdered, okay?”

  The voice in my head is changing, getting shrill: You can’t stay here. You’ve been kidnapped by psychos. RUN!

  But I don’t move. My body feels a thousand miles away. Lilly and Jules are both on the floor now, dazed. I’m just standing, stiff and scared, my hands clenched at my sides.

  “We should hide,” Will says. “We don’t know who might be down here.”

  “Down here?” I mimic. My voice sounds spiky, mean. It’s not supposed to. But that’s the only way I know how to talk. “How do you know we’re down anywhere, Will? How do you know where down is?”

  “The butterfly—” he starts, gesturing at the floor, and I laugh at him.

  “The Bessancourts’ coat of arms? But you’re assuming the Bessancourts ever existed in order to own a coat of arms. You’re assuming we weren’t lied to every single second by the Sapanis.”

  Will moves a little closer to me. He’s wearing a watch, one of those bulky mountaineering ones. He sidles up, cautiously, and hits a button on it. Shows me the green-glowing screen.

  Elevation: 88 feet above sea level

  “So?” I say. I don’t know what that means. I’m an art history major, not a freaking Girl Scout.

  Will hits another button. Coordinates appear on the tiny screen. “I checked them when we got out of the cars,” he says. “The coordinates are the same. We’re right where we were yesterday. Except Péronne is two hundred feet above sea level.” He looks up at me. “We’re a hundred and twelve feet underground.”

  Lilly’s standing up, craning her neck to get a view of the watch, still bawling.

  Will shows her. A second later he switches off the screen. “The battery’s solar-powered,” he says quietly. “It’s going to die soon.”

  I have the urge to scream Just like usssss! while spinning maniacally over the marble.

  Instead I mumble: “I don’t get it. They didn’t have to do all this. They could have just dragged us off a street somewhere, or hacked us up in a parking garage—”

  Will doesn’t answer. Something else does. Somewhere in that huge, unbroken silence, something is creeping over the floor toward us, skittering like an animal. Lilly breaks out in a fresh, high-pitched sob.

  Images rush into my mind: huge, muscled zombies dragging rusted chains. Carnivorous plants. Shape-shifting insects. Every cliché I’ve ever seen on one of my late-night movie-watching binges. Please don’t let there be carnivorous plants down here. Please don’t do that to us.

  Click.

  The skittering breaks off. A red pinpoint of light pops up about thirty feet down the hall, glimmering.

  I stare at it, holding my breath.

  The light’s in the wall. A panel snapped back, and now a square of embedded machinery is exposed, coils of gray metal tubes and that red lens, staring out like an eye.

  “Sealed for two hundred years?” Jules breathes. “Really?”

  To the right, I hear a second click.

  I jerk around, staring through the dark. Another red light has popped up on the opposite wall. A steady, round glow. And now the red light buzzes out of it, slicing across the hallway in a pure, thin cut, as if someone slit open the darkness. A hologram springs up in the center of the hall. We gape at it, huddling together on the floor.

  “Children.”

  It’s Dorf. The hologram isn’t detailed, no eyes or nose discernible, but I recognize the sloping shoulders, the hugeness. “Reopen the blast door.” His voice is low and quick an
d utterly clinical. “This is for your own safety. Reopen the blast door and let in the security team—”

  The hologram casts a grainy, fuzzy red light over our faces.

  “Can you hear me?” Dorf says. “We have a visual on you. Open the door and let in our security team. I cannot guarantee your well-being otherwise.”

  “Our well-being?” I almost choke on my own sarcasm. “If you were concerned for our well-being, maybe you shouldn’t have murdered Hayden, how’s that for an idea?”

  “Anouk,” he says. He can hear us. He pauses. Turns, maybe to someone else in the room he’s in. “Listen to me,” he says, in that same cold, urgent voice. “This should not have occurred. It is vital that you follow my instructions exactly. Turn around. Return to the blast door. Unbar it as quickly as you can. If you do not open that door, you will die. There is nothing we will be able to do to help you. You’re being clever now, thinking, ‘Well, I’ll die either way,’ but believe me, there are ways to die so terrible you cannot possibly comprehend them.”

  “Yeah?” I say, and I feel a hysterical thrill rising in me, making me brave and giddy. “Well, we’re not opening that door.”

  The hologram seems to stiffen, darken. “Anouk, this is not a game. You have not locked us out; you have locked yourselves in. You have approximately three minutes to live—”

  “And if we let you in, we have one,” I say.

  “What happens in three minutes?” Jules whispers. “What are they going to do to us?”

  “He’s bluffing,” I say, like I have a clue.

  “Children, open the door.” Dorf’s voice is tense now, his control slipping.

  I start walking toward the red eye in the wall. Wrap my fingers around the key-chain light, locking it behind my knuckles. I reach the panel. Above the red light is a camera lens.

  “Come and get me,” I say under my breath. Grit my teeth and smash my fist into the tech panel. Glass crunches. It hurts, but I don’t bleed. The hologram flickers out.

  Everyone’s on their feet now. I hurry back to them. We have about five seconds of silence, and now two more panels slide open, farther down the hall. Two new lights blink on. The red lines collide. Dorf springs up a second time.