I saw what looked like an electronics store, its display window fully stocked, with a sign claiming credit was available inside. My eyes paused on a gourmet coffee shop with tables and chairs out front and even a chalk sandwich board on an A-frame easel.
That’s when I noticed someone had planted trees in here.
A lot of the light came from what must be high-powered UV bulbs, meant to approximate sunlight. They’d probably done it to keep those trees alive.
I don’t know if our entrance triggered it, but I heard water flowing.
My eyes found a fountain in a small alcove between the nearest restaurant and the gourmet coffee shop.
I looked at Dalejem, raising an eyebrow.
“Huh,” I said.
He gave me a grim look, then motioned with the rifle down the thoroughfare.
“They’re that way,” he said.
I nodded, confirming the aleimic signatures with my light.
I took a snapshot of their location, then proceeded to do the same with every aspect I could sniff out of the scene before us, using my eyes, ears, nose and light. Assuming we got out of here alive, I wanted to be able to send Balidor every creepy detail of this place.
The aleimic signatures of our quarry felt a lot clearer now, even more than they had when we first entered that stairwell. I could even get a rough head count now, at least of the beings we were being allowed to feel.
Nothing else was any clearer, though.
I still couldn’t find the boundaries of the caves with my light. I had no idea how big this particular “room” was, much less the complex as a whole.
I wondered if we would find similar Main Streets behind the doors we’d passed on the other floors. I wondered if they were all mimicking American towns, or if some would reflect the suburbs of other countries and cultures.
For now, my light and instincts told me we were alone. The work crews who set this place up still lingered in the aleimic imprints, but I felt no one else.
Anyway, this place was too showroom-perfect to be occupied. It was too dead-feeling, too. Well, not dead exactly––more like it was waiting.
It felt like it was waiting.
I couldn’t help thinking it wouldn’t be waiting much longer.
“Agreed,” Dalejem said from next to me. “I think not long at all, Esteemed Bridge.”
I glanced at him, firming my mouth. I didn’t answer.
Biting back the misgiving swimming through my light, I once more scanned the surrounding space. I knew the chances of Shadow’s people showing up here now, when we happened to be inside, had to be a million-to-one. Even so, my hands rested on my guns at each hip.
Someone must be guarding this place… somehow.
Unless Shadow wanted us here.
Unless Feigran brought us here for him.
Shoving the thought from my mind, I drew the Desert Eagle from my right thigh holster and began to walk. Immediately, I felt Dalejem pacing me, his own, much larger gun propped on his shoulder. I couldn’t feel anything at all on him now.
“Ten minutes to locate them,” I said, giving him a bare glance. “Or to find a reason to stay. Then we’re on our way out.” Seeing his green eyes on mine, I made a gesture with the hand holding the Eagle. “We have to assume they have alarms down here. Someone will be coming.”
Dalejem nodded, once.
Still, I felt a whisper of something else on his light.
I suspected I knew what it meant.
He doubted anyone was coming for the same reasons I did. They simply didn’t see us as a threat. Perhaps we were even being offered an unguided tour.
A glimpse of things to come.
“Agreed,” Dalejem breathed, still holding up his rifle as he walked soundlessly to my right. “I think that is most accurate, sister. Well, except perhaps the last part. I think we are definitely not a threat to them… not in their mind, at least.”
I grunted, not taking my eyes off the store front windows, or my fingers off the flat part of my gun barrel just above the trigger.
“Are we a threat to them in yours?” I said, my voice sarcastic.
Dalejem’s voice remained serious.
“I think we are… expected,” he said.
“By Shadow?”
Dalejem shook his head, but not entirely in a no. I saw him frown, as if trying to catch some scent in the Barrier that eluded him.
“By someone,” he said after a pause. “I do not know if it is Shadow. It could be someone else. Perhaps the being you came here to find.”
I looked at Feigran.
The auburn-haired seer rocked on his heels, gazing up at the ceiling, his mouth hardened in concentration. He’d started humming again, muttering every few seconds between the longer breaths. I doubted he knew he was doing either thing.
Apparently Dalejem had given up on silencing him.
Aware that my nerves were starting to affect my concentration, I hardened my light into a military cloak. Once I had my thoughts more or less under control, I looked back over the row of storefronts.
I frowned at a window filled with small manikins wearing children’s and baby’s clothes. I knew once this place was lit up, it would likely be filled with virtual ads as well as the more old-fashioned display cases like I could see now. Still, something about those child-sized manikins with fake blue eyes and wide-spread arms was deeply disturbing.
Turning over Dalejem’s words, I glanced at him.
“You think we should leave now?” I said. “Before we find out why we’re here?”
Dalejem shook his head. “No,” he said. “No… it is too late for that. But we should be very careful about not doing whatever it is we are being guided to do down here.”
Thinking about this, I nodded more slowly.
“Agreed,” I said.
... Assuming it’s not too late for that already, my brother, my mind muttered.
Dalejem glanced at me.
I didn’t return his look, but continued to case the buildings as we passed.
Feigran huddled just behind us, keeping pace despite the smaller lengths of his steps. Clutching his fingers and hands together at chest-height, he was staring into the windows of stores whenever I glanced back, his eyes round, his sculpted mouth pressed in a small line.
“Laboratory,” he muttered. “Rats in tunnels… rats… food for ghosts…”
It frightened me that I understood that.
Fighting back a surge of unease that wanted to pool adrenaline in my gut, I sent my light out ahead, right as we passed another restaurant, an old-fashioned-style Italian place. The tables had checkered tablecloths complete with wicker-wrapped wine bottles coated in different-colored splatters of candle wax. It reminded me of places I’d been to with Jon in The Village, what felt like a million years ago now.
“You’ve dealt with this before,” Dalejem said, his voice low.
I glanced at him, then returned my eyes to the buildings. Still walking, I shrugged, aiming the gun at windows on my side of the street.
“Sort of,” I conceded. Hesitating, I amended, “Well… no. Not like this. But the feeling, yes. It’s familiar. Mostly from Revik.”
“Revik?” Dalejem’s voice sharpened.
Only a little, but I heard it.
I exhaled.
“Yes.” I glanced at Dalejem with a frown. “He was forced to spend a lot of time in that fucker’s mind.” I motioned at the storefronts with the gun. My fingers tightened on the grip as I continued in a low murmur.
“He used Menlim as a strategic partner through pretty much all of World War I. Revik knows how Menlim thinks. He showed me how insidious his manipulation tactics could be, how subtle… how patient. There were more obvious things, of course: back up plans, contingencies, hiding plans within plans… things even his own people didn’t know. But the mental manipulations were the real source of his power. I picked up a lot from him––Revik, I mean. Even stuff he didn’t know he knew. Including what Menlim’s mind fe
els like. How it’s structured… why he’d be so meticulous in the details of a place like this.”
Dalejem frowned, but only nodded.
He kept his reaction hidden in his light that time.
Even so, I found myself biting back a different pain that wanted to build in my light.
We didn’t speak again until we’d passed a few more blocks in that odd replica of rural town America. I still didn’t see any end to the street we were on; the further we walked, the longer it seemed to stretch out in front of us.
I saw a lot of alleys and roads on either side, but we didn’t venture down any of them. We stayed on the main street, the one the door fed us into.
We paused briefly at a park on our right, complete with real grass under more of those sunlight-imitating bulbs. Away from the sheltering bulk of the buildings and stores, I felt artificial wind, as well; I smelled blooming flowers, new grass, pine needles and wet earth.
Full-grown trees had been planted in the park itself. A large play set took up one corner of the lawn, set on top of a bouncy, spongey material like rubber.
A pond lived just past the play set, filled with toy motor boats. The sheer detail of the scene was heart-stopping, unsettling. I found myself thinking there would be ducks at some point, although maybe virtual ones so they didn’t make a mess.
Even as I thought it, Dalejem pointed at the screens behind the pond.
Following his fingers, I nodded as soon as my light identified what he’d seen.
Virtual capability––of course.
Glancing up, I realized the entire ceiling was made of the same material. This whole area would probably be indistinguishable from the planet’s surface once all the bells and whistles got turned on. There would be a sky up there. Clouds. Maybe even weather.
Pain slid through me at the thought.
It wasn’t separation pain.
The idea of generations of kids growing up down here, cut off from real sun and wind, living inside Menlim’s rat cage, as Feigran called it, depressed the hell out of me. I fought with the anger that rose in my light––the utter calculation and yet total indifference of it.
It was entirely logical, even on paper.
To the naked eye, it looked beautiful.
Idyllic, even.
Yet every single thing about it felt wrong––and for reasons I couldn’t even fully articulate to myself.
They wouldn’t know any different. They’d grow up grateful to be alive at all. They’d probably grow up with some bullshit, quasi-religious mythology about how much they owed their Great Leader and benefactor for surviving an extinction-level event.
The thought made my stomach hurt as I stared at the organic play set with its rubber bumpers on the bottom and artificial ground.
Dalejem touched my arm.
When I looked over, he motioned with his head, rifle raised.
I followed the direction of his gesture and saw the front of a pet store, painted with bright, colorful colors. Feeling the older seer push me lightly to see behind the walls there, I let out a low grunt.
Gaos. Talk about a little too on the nose.
Dalejem suggested with hand gestures that he go ahead this time. He tied his dark hair back once he’d said it, letting go of the rifle just long enough to pull his hair back into a thick ponytail. He tied it deftly with a leather thong to get it the rest of the way out of his face.
I nodded to his question about who should go first.
Even so, when he began to walk towards the pet store, I ignited the bare edges of the telekinesis. I also stayed close, walking right behind where Feigran stayed attached to Dalejem by the organic lead.
Dalejem pushed through the glass front doors.
A little bell jangled, like something out of a movie and I looked up, caught off guard.
Dalejem barely paused.
He walked soundlessly down the middle aisle towards the back end of the empty store, his booted tread silent. He gave bare glances to either side, although I felt his light extend outward, still inside my shield but definitely in scouting mode. Like Balidor, he had that knack of doing it without leaving much of a footprint at all.
Of course, I knew it probably wouldn’t make much difference. Light touch or not, if this place was being watched, we’d already been ID’d.
I didn’t let myself think about that for long.
I didn’t stop walking either––although I did look around more than Dalejem seemed to.
I noted the cages for bigger animals and aquariums for what might be smaller rodents or reptiles, in addition to the ones obviously meant for fish.
It was unnerving that most of the store was already stocked, at least with everything that wouldn’t die or go bad. Boxes of animal toys and canned food lined the shelves and even hung from hooks, already on display.
The fact that everything was ready to go––or would be in a night’s work by some industrious minimum wage worker––only worsened my unease.
I glanced at the time in my headset.
We’d already blown past the ten minutes.
I tried to feel how far ahead of us those aleimic signatures might be. All I knew for certain is that I still wasn’t getting an accurate reading on distances down here.
I supposed it didn’t matter. Clearly, Dalejem and I were in agreement around the need to continue forward.
I watched him approach a metal door at the back of the store. It looked like a meat locker, or a walk-in cooler at restaurants I’d worked back in San Francisco.
I could feel what Dalejem had shown me outside the store.
Someone was tugging us this way.
I was a lot less sure it was Menlim now.
“Is it locked?” I asked Dalejem.
He stopped in front of the door.
“No.” His voice was openly puzzled. “Which is strange… yes?”
He glanced over his shoulder at me, his green eyes reflecting the overhead lights. It didn’t really occur to me until then that this whole place was lit. Was it always so? Or had everything turned on for us when we opened that door from the stairwell?
“You can feel them, can’t you?” he said. “I’m right, na? They’re through here?”
I nodded. “I feel them.”
“And they don’t even have a fucking bike lock on this thing?” he said, motioning towards the door. “Not even to keep them in… much less keep anyone out?”
I didn’t answer.
I felt my unease worsen.
“Afraid you wouldn’t come…” Feigran muttered. “Happy you’re here. Very happy, happy. Happy with Feigran. Very happy with Feigran. Give the dog a bone. Lots of times, over and over… make him beg.”
I felt a thick flush of heat off Feigran’s light and winced.
I really hoped that didn’t mean what I thought it meant.
“Who, Feigran?” I said, ignoring the rest of what he’d said. “Who was afraid we wouldn’t come?”
“Not we.” Feigran shook his head, still staring at the door. “Not we, sister. You. You, you, you. It’s you he wants here. You were invited.”
I watched Dalejem pull open the heavy metal door.
I continued to keep my eyes on his broad back as he peered inside, likely using the infrared on his headset. Whatever he used, his light or virtual, he stared into that dark for a few seconds, his eyes sweeping the corners.
I looked at Feigran, realizing he’d never answered my question.
“Who wants us to come, Feigran?” I said.
The Elaerian only shook his head, clicking under his breath.
For some reason, I didn’t let it go. “Feigran? Who wants us to come?”
“Surprise…” he muttered. “Wants a surprise.”
Dalejem grunted, giving me a look.
Frowning, I turned my gaze back on Feigran. “I’m not a fan of surprises. Can we not have surprises down here, Fig? Can you just tell me the truth?”
When the Elaerian didn’t answer, I made my voice
warning.
“You don’t want to die, do you, brother?” I said.
He jumped. Then he turned, wide-eyed. He shook his head.
“Then tell me who it is,” I said.
Feigran only shook his head again. He went back to muttering once he had, too low for me to make out words. I couldn’t feel him in the Barrier anymore, either.
I sighed, even as Dalejem looked back at me, meeting my gaze.
“Are we going forward?” he said.
From his tone, I couldn’t tell if he was for or against the idea.
“Both,” he said. “Neither.”
At what must have been an annoyed look from me, he sighed, clicking.
“I admit to being intrigued,” he said, tilting his head. “Put it this way, if I was alone, I would go. And probably rationalize it as a need for intelligence.”
I snorted, smiling in spite of myself.
“…Which isn’t altogether untrue,” he added, despite the harder look he aimed at me. “As it is, I am not alone, Esteemed Bridge. Moreover, I have the highest ranked seer in existence with me. The one on whom the outcome of the Displacement itself may very well rest.”
When I rolled my eyes, he frowned.
“As much as you like to pretend otherwise, you are irreplaceable, Esteemed Sister. I strongly suspect brother Balidor would have my head on a pike already, if he knew where we were right now. Especially if he knew I’d let you come this far with nothing but me and that rambling idiot as companions.”
I snorted at that, too, but less humorously.
“You did notice I didn’t bring brother Balidor to Colorado with me?” I said drily.
“You know what I mean.”
I nodded. “I do, brother. I also remember the condition you agreed to when I let you accompany me on this little jaunt. You agreed not to question me. You also agreed to follow orders. So far, I mostly hear a lot of old man Adhipan whingeing. I also hear a lot of questions. And, like you just pointed out, I could have invited Balidor here with me if I’d wanted that. At least he’s earned that right with me.”
Exhaling in another series of clicks, Dalejem hardened his voice.
“Fine,” he said, motioning sharply. “If you are going to do this crazy thing… and force me to be your accomplice… we should do it fast.”
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