by Dan Krokos
“She has a huge lead on us,” Rhys says. “Guarantee if she went there she’s moved on by now—well, I don’t guarantee, but it’s likely. We don’t even know why she liked the place.”
I sigh. “Maybe we can follow her trail. Rhys. You got a better idea?”
Peter cuts in. “Maybe her fixation on the place was some kind of leak from the latent personality. She didn’t know why she was drawn to it, because she wasn’t supposed to be yet. Not until the code changed her.”
“Fine,” Rhys says. “Say we get there and Nina is waiting for us. Then what?”
“We take her down,” Peter replies. “We find out what the hell is going on.”
I tell Peter to take the highway.
I can taste Sequel’s kiss. This is wrong. I shouldn’t have Noah’s memories. They swim in my mind, waiting, an unlocked chest. I just have to pry open the lid. One thought and I’ll know everything.
I wish I could go back. Actually, no I don’t. I wouldn’t have done anything differently. But that doesn’t mean I like the outcome. I just have to remind myself the memories provided something to go on, even if it’s as ambiguous as a dirty old building.
Peter gets off the highway and I tell him left or right or straight. The road reels past, overlaying with the memory of Noah’s route. We pass the same gas station, the same broken street sign, until I say, “Here,” and Peter stops the van. He parallel parks at the mouth of the alley. From this shallow angle I can see the wooden door Sequel kicked in. Someone wedged it back into the frame. The whole building appears abandoned. No signs say what it might have been. The street is even emptier than it was in Noah’s memory—a scar from the dry run. Not many people stay in Cleveland anymore, if they can help it. The memory of the crazed people in the streets, literally insane with fear, is too fresh in the public mind.
“This is it,” I say, pulling on my scaled gloves. The suit merges with the gloves, as seamless as everything else. Now I’m protected from toe to jaw.
“You’re sure…” Rhys says. I don’t bother to respond.
Peter goes over a simple plan. “If she’s there we try to talk her down. If she isn’t in the talking mood, we try to immobilize her. But if it’s too dangerous, just use your judgment. Got it?”
“A fine plan,” Rhys says, “if we can skip the talking part.”
Peter pinches the bridge of his nose. “Rhys…”
“A fine plan,” he repeats, this time seriously.
“Miranda?” Peter says.
“Got it. Nina was armed the last time I saw her.” Like they didn’t remember that detail.
Peter finishes with, “If she’s not there, we look for something that says she was. Then we…I don’t know. Figure something else out.”
We gather our weapons and step into the chilled night. My stomach growls and my hands shake a little, probably not from low blood sugar. Stepping into the alley is strange, like putting on someone else’s glasses. I see with my eyes and Noah’s. He watches Sequel kick in the door, wondering what this place holds. Now I stand in front of the same door. In so many ways, I’m the same girl who kicked it in.
Peter’s voice snaps me back to reality. “What do you see?”
Things I don’t want to. “This is the door.”
Rhys jogs to the front and tries to look through the windows, but they’re too dirty and it’s too dark. “Can’t see a thing,” he says. “Not sure how—”
Peter kicks in the door. I guess I’m not the only one out of patience.
The hinges were already broken, so the whole door screeches out of the frame and bounces down the steps into the basement. It slams flat and dust billows up from the sides, curling like smoke. I jump through the opening and onto the door, knowing immediately we’re alone. I turn a slow circle, taking it in. The room feels ancient, like things happened here so long ago there’s no one alive to remember them. The air smells only slightly better than the stench of the morgue.
Now that I’m here, I feel the draw of the place. We’re supposed to be here, but I have no idea why. It’s like an old memory brought back with a smell or a sound. Blurry, but familiar.
“Do you feel it?” I walk to the wall and lightly run my fingers over the bricks.
Behind me, Peter and Rhys have their eyes on me in a way that makes my skin crawl. I shouldn’t have said what I did. If they’re not feeling the draw, they’re definitely hearing alarm bells.
“Something about this place,” I say, trying to sound casual. “You don’t feel it?” The back of my mind prickles where Noah’s memories are. Maybe I’m imagining it.
“I don’t,” Peter says.
“I dunno,” Rhys says.
Time has crumbled the mortar to ash, leaving the bricks crooked and unstable. I scrape at one with my fingernail. In fact, there’s barely any mortar at all. Just chunks and flakes clinging to the old brick. White dust covers the floor near my feet, a few chips of brick strewn here and there. At the top of the wall is a black gap in the bricks, where one is jammed in sideways. Another one sticks out a few feet to my left. I don’t need to recall Noah’s memory to know the wall wasn’t like this before. I lean closer and feel a draft on my cheeks through the tiny gaps in the bricks.
This wall was not whole just a short time ago. Someone rebuilt it.
I place both hands on brick that seems ready to crumble under my fingertips—
“There’s nothing here,” Rhys says.
—and push.
The wall collapses. Bricks rain down and clap against one another, powdering the mortar into a gray-white cloud. It took no effort at all. The wall simply fell over.
The room beyond stretches until it’s less a room and more a tunnel. I visualize the building from the outside. It stood alone on this side of the street, next to empty weedy lots and the skeleton of a warehouse in the distance. Wherever this tunnel leads, it’s not to another building, at least not one close by.
Nina came here and pushed through the wall, then put the bricks back together the best she could. At first I think, Why bother to cover your tracks? But then I realize that the only reason I gave the old wall a second look was because of Noah’s memory. The rebuild wasn’t perfect, but if we had tracked her here some other way, it’s possible we wouldn’t have noticed.
Peter kicks the opposite wall hard and bounces right off. I try the two adjacent walls—both solid.
I search Noah’s memories for another time they were here. I skip the part where her mouth is on his neck, to the part where she stared at the wall but made no move to touch it. So the question is, what drew her when she was Sequel? It could be like Peter said—leakage from the Nina personality into the Sequel one. She knew this place was important, but didn’t know why.
I guess it doesn’t matter in the end. Except…I felt the same draw when we got here. Maybe my brain is just confused, trying to understand how I could remember this place even though it’s my first time here.
Rhys stares down the tunnel. It’s blacker than coal. He dusts his hands together and turns around. “Where do you think…?”
“Only one way to find out,” Peter says.
Rhys makes a sound that’s almost a laugh. “So Nina rebuilt the wall to hide her passing. Which means whatever she’s doing is important enough to hide. I’m sure the wall took more than five minutes to rebuild.”
Which means maybe her lead isn’t so huge after all.
“Back to the only one way to find out part. I’ll get the flashlights.” Peter heads up the stairs to the alley, and before I can stop myself, I follow him outside.
I grab his wrist and pull him back. Who knows when we’ll be alone again. My stomach grows heavy and sweat prickles under my suit. I don’t want to look him in the eye and see what he’s feeling, because I like pretending nothing bothers him. But Peter usually doesn’t try to hide his feelings unless there’s a tactical advantage. And that’s exactly what I’m looking for—some sign to confirm I’m a member of the team, not a possible thr
eat.
I get my answer right away, I think. His eyes are hard. Guarded.
“You still trust me?”
He swallows, which is all the answer I need. But I wait anyway.
“You want me to go?” I say.
“We talked about this. No.”
I lower my voice so Rhys can’t hear. “But you can’t trust me until we know more,” I say, like an accusation. I shouldn’t say it that way, because it’s not his fault.
“Are you asking me or telling me? What do you want me to do, Miranda? I’m sorry, I love you.”
There it is, out in the open now. He can’t unsay it. We’ve been dancing around the phrase, both of us knowing it was too soon to say, both of us wanting to say it. Both of us too chicken.
Say it back.
“You do?” I say instead.
“Yeah.” His face isn’t expectant. He isn’t waiting for anything in return. Or if he is, he’s doing a great job of hiding it.
“So—” I begin, not even sure what I’m going to say. He grabs my arm and leads me away from the door.
“But I can’t let that affect my judgment,” he whispers. “I love you, and I trust you, but what if you…if you become not you, I have to be careful, you know.” His eyes are wet.
You’re supposed to feel different when someone tells you they love you. Right now I’d rather he shut me out completely. Not for the first time, I imagine taking off. Just stealing a car and driving anywhere. But I’d die before I let Nina get away with what she did. Plus, Peter could just find me with that stupid tracker I swallowed.
Peter reaches for me, but I lean away. “Don’t, I might be dangerous.”
“That’s not fair. You said there was something about this place, and you asked me if I felt it. Tell me that doesn’t sound weird.”
He’s right, of course.
“Just get the flashlights,” I say, then head back for the basement.
Rhys is crouching, examining a brick, pretending he wasn’t trying to eavesdrop. He lets it fall from his hands. “Everything okay?” he says with a kindness I don’t usually hear in his voice. “Besides the obvious.” He’s smiling.
I almost smile back. “We’ll see.”
The tunnel is empty and black and shored up with wooden beams, like a mine. Someone built this. That idea burns away any thoughts I have for Peter and our relationship. Someone built this. More importantly, someone built this and Nina knew about it. Someone dug a hidden tunnel under the city, and then Nina showed up many years later, and I have no idea why, and neither do Peter and Rhys. It seems ancient, too old to be made by our creators. Cobwebs the size of quilts hang from the beams, which are so old they look like stone, not wood. Our three flashlight beams sway and cut through the black, showing more black. Our feet scrape lightly in the grit. Our breath is steady, our pace even. We don’t talk because our bodies are live wires, listening for the smallest sounds, eyes peeled for whatever lies just beyond our beams. With every few steps I expect Nina to materialize out of the darkness, sword in hand.
We walk fifteen minutes over uneven ground. The air smells baked and old, like stones left in the sun.
Rhys is the first one to speak. “When do we give up and go back?”
Peter says, “You need to rest?”
“No, I’m just wondering who builds a damn tunnel behind a wall for no reason.”
I step over a small boulder. “Who says there’s no reason?”
He’s quiet for twenty seconds. “I don’t see one yet, is all.”
And then we do. We come to railroad tracks. Two thin steel lines curve away into darkness. After another hundred feet, my beam catches the broad wooden back side of a four-wheeled cart. Like the kind I imagine coal miners used but bigger, big enough to hold all of us and then some. The huge wheels are rust-brown but solid. We circle the cart, shining our flashlights on it from every angle. The sides are made of old gnarled wooden planks banded together by thick iron strips.
“No engine,” Rhys says.
“Would it have an engine?” Peter says.
Rhys leans over the side of the cart and shines his flashlight around. “No mechanism to propel us manually, so yeah, I’d expect an engine.”
The cart looks old but whole. Not degraded in any way. I swing my legs over the side and plant my feet on metal rusted to the color of my hair.
And the cart begins to move.
“Get out!” Peter says.
“You get in!” I reply.
No time for them to argue. Peter and Rhys sprint after me—I’m accelerating quicker than I expected—and I pull them up and over the back end.
Within seconds we’re traveling too fast to jump off. The wind buffets us and we sit down, heads just above the sides of the cart, barreling into darkness. The wheels howl and screech on the track, vibrating the cart’s frame, making my teeth buzz. The ground is still flat; the cart is definitely moving under its own power.
“We didn’t think this one through,” Peter shouts.
“Did you want to walk the rest of the way?” I shout back, hoping this was the right decision. I try to relax the tension in my muscles, but with only darkness ahead it feels like we could drop off the rails and into an underground cavern at any second.
Rhys says, “If Nina made this trip, we’re in the right place. Soon we’ll find out why. Or maybe the cart will come off the rails and dash our heads against the walls.” He laughs, but we don’t. His face grows serious as he aims the flashlight under his chin. Supposed to laugh in times like these, he says, too quiet for us to hear over the noise, but I read his lips.
The cart screams, the wind tears at my hair. Portions of the tunnel are lighted now. I see them in the distance as glowing yellow specks, and the next second we’re there, and the next they’re behind us, dwindling to darkness. I can’t even guess how fast we move. For a while I kneel at the front, hands gripping the front wall, staring forward into the black. The wail of metal on metal knocks any thoughts out of my head before they can fully form.
I lean back against the cart and settle down. It’s almost comfortable, minus the hair lashing my eyes. To my left, Peter strobes with light every ten seconds. His face is hard and determined, watching the way ahead of us.
The cart vibrates under me, rocking. A hundred miles an hour, at least. More. And it doesn’t end. We don’t drop off into a cavern, and I stop expecting us to. We’re going somewhere, that much is clear.
I stay awake for what feels like an hour, but nothing changes. We keep flying on the rails, but the route has become smooth. No curves to press us into the walls of the cart. Just a steady hum, a subtle tremor I feel with my entire body. The cart is doing its best to lull me to sleep.
Peter touches my arm lightly, startling me. “Rest,” he says. “I’ll let you know if something changes.”
I nod, grateful, because I don’t know when I’ll get to close my eyes again. Somehow I drift into something half aware and half asleep.
I’m outside a log cabin nestled against the sheer face of a cliff. I remember this place. We were doing a training exercise in the national park and came across this cabin. Noah convinced me to go inside because we were both stiff with the freezing winds. Inside there was a fire going, but no one around. We shared our first kiss next to the flames, one side of my face baking in the heat, the other stinging with the chill. I was fifteen.
Now the trees around me are green and alive with birdsong. I walk to the cabin and push through the door. Across the room, an unnecessary fire roars in the hearth. A knotty wood table sits in the middle with two cups on it. I can see from here the cups are filled with cocoa and mini marshmallows. Noah sits at the table, smiling. I sit down across from him, smiling back. I warm my hands on my mug, and he takes a sip.
“Let me out,” he says. “Let me help you. I promise I can.”
I want him to help. “Okay,” I say.
“It might hurt. There isn’t much room in here.”
“I’m ready,” I sa
y.
He licks his lips and takes another sip. I raise my own mug and tilt some of the cocoa into my mouth. It’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted. Then it’s not—it’s a thousand degrees and my insides bake and turn to ash and I open my mouth to scream—
I wake up to Peter’s lips against my ear.
No, it’s Rhys.
“Wake up, we’re slowing.”
I move to the front of the cart as the dream disperses. I try to catch it, but it’d be easier to catch smoke. The cart is no longer moving under its own power; it coasts. The tunnel is lit more frequently now, equal pools of black and light.
“How long was I out?”
“I don’t know,” Rhys says. “I lost track of time.”
The pitch of the screeching wheels drops as we slow, as does the wind in my ears. Peter is awake, in the same position I last saw him.
“Really, how long?” I say.
Rhys shrugs. “No idea. Definitely hours.”
I can’t believe it; the news stuns me enough that I have to just sit here and think about the magnitude of the tunnel. Where are we? We could be anywhere. The amount of work to build this place… It had to take forever to hew the tunnel from rock, to install the lights and beams. All so something could travel underground—but for what purpose, I have no idea. Nina might not have come this way at all, but the length of the trip makes me feel confident we’re on the right path. After all, the magical cart just waiting for us couldn’t have been a coincidence. The amount of unknowns makes me want to turn around, but it’s obviously too late for that. My skin prickles with the feeling that whatever lies ahead is big. If only because the tunnel should be impossible. And all the while my heart rate climbs as I anticipate/dread what comes next. Nina might be right around the corner.
It takes another full minute to slow enough for the wheels to quiet. A bright light shines down the tunnel, the size of a penny held at arm’s length. Peter tenses beside me. I fight the same reaction and try to stay loose.
The cart rolls to a final stop.
I jump off the front of the cart, pull Beacon off my back, and use my left hand to snatch the revolver from my thigh. I hear the boys hop down, several muted metallic scrapes as they pull their weapons too.