Doria Falls

by Michael Pierce

  9

  Refugees

  Colton brought me to the same interrogation room I’d ventured into the night before. Two wolves were back guarding the door, and Nicholae and Bruno were inside. Another makeshift cage with bars of pure purple energy was constructed on the adjacent wall from the first one. Trapped inside were five people, two adults and three children, two of whom I recognized immediately.

  “These two boys say they know you,” Nicholae said as I entered the room.

  I glanced back, but Colton had already left, the door closed behind me.

  “Yes,” I said, approaching him and Bruno. “And one you know as well. Is this what all the commotion outside is about?”

  “I’m less concerned with who they are, and more with how they found this place.”

  I peered into the electric cage, the middle-aged couple and young girl appearing terribly shaken—and Darius trying his best to comfort the young girl whom I assumed was his little sister, and Logan glaring at Nicholae with palpable contempt.

  “Hey, guys.” I gave them a half-wave. “Didn’t expect to see you guys here. Nicholae, this is Logan, Cornelius’ son.” I pointed to the teenage boy with long brown hair and arms crossed on the far right.

  “Cornelius’ son is dead. He told me himself before Kafka murdered him,” Nicholae said.

  “He lied to you,” I said. “He obviously lied to everyone.”

  “No, we trusted each other completely.” Nicholae shook his head. “He brought me into the family. I was his apprentice. We were going to move you both together, to keep you safe. It had been planned.”

  “I’ve already told you this. My father hid me with this family,” Logan said, gesturing to the adult couple next to him, “in Provex City, where he thought I’d be safe.”

  “Nothing would be safer than the lowest plane,” Nicholae said.

  “He obviously thought differently. Maybe he wanted his kid in a place he could reach him instead of abandoning him for ten years or more.”

  “I did not abandon my son!” Nicholae screamed.

  The front bars of the cage disappeared and Nicholae dragged Logan out by the front of his shirt. Logan scrambled to keep his feet under him. The bars returned once he was through.

  I ran up to them and tried to pry Logan from Nicholae’s grasp.

  “Stop it!” I yelled. “This really is him—Cornelius’ son!”

  “How do I know?” Nicholae picked him off the floor, the neck of his shirt stretching and beginning to rip.

  “Because I know!” I said. “Like we discussed last night, my memories are returning. Logan returned to the castle after he was supposedly already dead. I saw him. He came to me. He kept himself hidden, but he came to me. He knows way too much about the Lorne family to be an outsider. And that is Logan’s and my friend Darius and his family. They’re not spies working with Kafka; they don’t have any part in what’s going on.”

  Nicholae lowered Logan so his feet could reach the floor, but he did not let him go.

  “Is all of this true?” Nicholae directed his question to Darius.

  Darius, kneeling next to and shielding the little girl in pink overalls, looked to me, then back to Nicholae and nodded. Every time Desiree and I had brought up the Lorne family with him, he would completely freak out and either divert the conversation or try to leave. The look on his face now was so much worse than any of those previous times.

  “For the time being, I will trust that you’re not here with any ill will toward our cause. But how did you find us? How did you know Oliver was here?”

  “I tracked him,” Logan said.

  “You tracked me?” I asked. “How? Why?”

  “Just a precaution, originally. But the Fitz’s apartment was destroyed in the earthquake. The whole world seemed to be falling apart and I knew Kafka had to be behind it somehow. And what if that was only the beginning?”

  “It is,” I interjected.

  “Yeah, well, I wanted to help the family that’s spent the better part of a decade helping me. I figured finding you was my best hope. So I followed my bug.”

  “Your bug?”

  “The tablet,” Logan said frankly. “I bugged it.”

  Nicholae finally let him go. “You’ve told no one you were coming here?”

  “I didn’t know where here was,” Logan said angrily. “I just followed the blinking dot. It took us a while and this place is so much more f—screwed up than below, but I felt like I was doing the right thing. Was I wrong, Nicholae? Is the son of your mentor and the family he chose to protect me not welcome here?”

  Nicholae slid his hands down his face and sighed. Before answering or just continuing the interrogation, he paced around in a circle. He gestured something to Bruno and all the purple bars on the Fitz family holding cell dropped into the ground. A rectangular piece of metal protruded from the wall ten feet up was the only thing left of the holding cell, but the family didn’t move.

  “Now that I’ve confidently established who you are and how you found this compound, you’re all welcome to stay and live under our protection. Those of you interested in joining our training sessions may do so to better prepare yourselves in case any fighting comes to us. However, I cannot guarantee your safety.”

  “We understand,” Logan said. “We had nowhere else to go. I, for one, will join the fight.”

  I walked up and put an arm on his shoulder. “It’s good to see you.”

  “So you’re remembering me now, huh?”

  “I know I brought you food in the castle.”

  “You did.” Logan smiled. “Quite a few times.”

  “Oliver,” Nicholae said. “Bring me the tablet. Can the bug be taken out? Or does the whole tablet have to be destroyed?”

  Logan nodded. “Yeah, I can take it out.

  “Good. Bring both pieces to me. Oliver, show them to your building. I trust there’s enough space for all of you?”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “There’s plenty of room.”

  When we got back to our room, Mr. Gordon had returned and everyone could now get acquainted at one time. Desiree was a little too happy to see Darius again, which irked me, but I felt confident enough in our relationship to let it go. Darius’s little sister, Amber, was seven years old and she held a large stuffed animal frog to her chest, refusing to put it down for anything. I understood having a comforting piece of home by your side, especially in times of great uncertainty like right now. I had my little Frolics and Desiree had her Elliott Smith sweatshirt. Darius’s parents both seemed nice. They were soft spoken and polite. Now that they were out of the cage, they didn’t appear nearly as distraught as I would have imagined with having their entire world literally collapse. They were already asking in what ways they could help the camp—besides fighting.

  “Wow,” Jeremy said to Logan. “I can’t believe it’s really you. What a small world.” He turned to me. “What are the odds that he’d show up at the same school as us after all these years?”

  “Coincidence, I guess,” I said, and made sure Mr. Gordon hadn’t heard me.

  “I wouldn’t have recognized you guys either if Cias hadn’t showed up in the locker room. Once I saw him, I knew something was going on.” Logan licked his lips and shook his head. “What a mess.”

  “You were part of that?” Jeremy asked in amazement.

  “Cias was in our locker room?!” I asked.

  “At the start. But I backed off after Cias got involved, to retain my anonymity. He obviously didn’t recognize me, either. But I didn’t want to push my luck.”

  “God, I can’t believe that,” Jeremy said.

  “What are you guys talking about?” I asked, growing increasingly frustrated.

  “Cias healed Sasha before he left, which you have no idea how much that freaked him out.” Logan laughed. “But you left me to clean up the locker room.”

  “I did?” Jeremy asked.

  “Yeah, I blame you. Thanks for that. It was a freakin’ mess.”
/>   “What mess?” It was like I wasn’t even there.

  “Fair enough. I’ll take some responsibility,” Jeremy said. “But I didn’t know what he was gonna do.”

  “When Sasha confronted you with the screwdriver in the locker room,” Logan said to me. “Cias appeared like a ghost and roughed Sasha up a little. I saw that white bald bastard, but he didn’t realize I could see him. So I ran for it before I gave myself away. When I came back a short while later—let’s just say the aftermath was gruesome.”

  “After I ran out?” I asked.

  “And the door closed behind you…yeah, that’s when it happened.”

  “Oliver, remember after your fight?” Jeremy asked. “I told you I’d take care of them.”

  “By sicking Cias on them?” I asked. “Because Sasha was pretty pissed when he came after me again. I think he wanted me dead.”

  “Yeah,” Jeremy said, pushing up the sleeves of this black shirt. “I hadn’t anticipated retaliation after the scare he’d received. I figured it was done. That was my bad.”

  I turned back to Logan. “Well you did a good job cleaning up. When I returned to retrieve my bag after lunch, it looked like nothing had happened.”

  “That was the idea,” Logan said sarcastically, reminding me a little too much of Jeremy.

  I glanced over at Desiree having a semi-private conversation with Darius. Darius’s hair was still perfectly disheveled and his designer-looking clothes fit his body like they were specifically tailored for him. It made me sick. Amber stood next to him, continuing to hug her frog.

  “Where’s the tablet?” Logan asked. “Shouldn’t we bring it to your father sooner rather than later? He’s not the most patient man.”

  I grabbed my backpack off the post of the bunk, took out the tablet, and handed it to him.”

  “Work your magic,” I said.

  Logan flipped it over and swiped his finger across the upper edge. The blue outline of a grid appeared on the back of the device. As he pressed a sequence of buttons, they illuminated royal blue with each touch. When he finished, the back of the tablet clicked and disengaged from the front. He used a fingernail to pry the back cover off, revealing the electronic innards within.

  “I still can’t believe you were tracking me,” I said.

  “It was a good thing I did. Otherwise we’d be on our own right now.”

  Logan removed a small chip from under a coil of thin wires and held it up, pinching it between two fingers. “Well worth the money.”

  I told Mr. Gordon that Logan and I had to visit Nicholae. We headed back to the interrogation room, but the wolves were gone. I peered in the room to find it empty except for the one prisoner-filled cage, the bars providing the only light in the room.

  I was about to close the door when I heard a voice.

  “Don’t go!”

  I opened it wider to get a better look.

  “Please help us.” The voice came from the man that I had seen fused to the chair.

  The scene in the cage was dismal. Each inmate wore a face grimmer than the next. The man sat slumped on a bench, head in his hands. Beside him sat the man with red hair, a teenage boy, and a middle-aged woman farther down. They looked listlessly at the opposite wall. A younger woman, probably in her mid-twenties, was standing in front of them. She started to reach out to me and the electrified bars, and then thought better of it.

  “We’re not from the other Lorne camp,” the man started again. “We would never—we came across the previous camp by accident. We’re not spies. We weren’t gathering any information.”

  I stepped in the doorway.

  “I don’t think we should be here,” Logan said.

  “You saw what they’re doing to us,” the lady said desperately.

  “Please help us.” The older lady stood up and joined the younger.

  “I can’t,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  “They’re here for a reason,” Logan said.

  “And so were you,” I shot back. “Nicholae and the others were wrong about you. What if…” I couldn’t finish my thought.

  “He finally listened after some convincing.”

  “You didn’t see what he was doing to them,” I said sadly. “It wasn’t right.”

  “Who’re you to say what’s right? Is what’s happening outside—is that right?”

  “Who are you then?” I asked the ladies standing by the pulsing purple bars, stepping farther into the room.

  “We were detained and released from this strange psychiatric hospital. I don’t even know how I got there. I was admitted to Glowerbrook hospital and woke up alone in this room with—” the younger lady doing the talking looked down at her feet. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me,” I challenged.

  “With her…my shadow.”

  I remembered Nero mentioning the term shadow when I first met him, explaining that each plane had a different name for a person’s other half.

  Both ladies looked defeated when no one immediate responded to the revelation just expressed.

  “We were dropped off near the previous camp with nothing. We didn’t know where we were,” the older lady said, trying to push past the insanity of what her partner had said so they didn’t lose what ground they thought they were gaining.

  “We were cold and hungry, with no money—nothing—having no idea how to get home,” the younger woman said.

  I knew what they were talking about—Alexandria Lorne’s pleasant little asylum. But why were they abducted? How were the people in the cage before us significant?

  “You know where they’re talking about, right?” I asked Logan.

  He nodded, grimly.

  “Did you all know each other before the hospital?” I asked the women.

  “No,” the younger one replied. “We were all admitted for various procedures, but woke up in…in that place—with these strange devices on our legs, sharing rooms with our shadows and—when we were dropped off, I’d never seen any of these people before in my life. I swear it. I swear we don’t know anything.” She began to cry, turning to the older woman, who wrapped an arm around her shoulder and drew her into a hug as her sobs grew louder.

  “What did I tell you?” I said to Logan.

  “I kinda believe them,” he replied.

  I did, too, but had no idea what our move should be. Nicholae was not someone I cared to double cross; it didn’t take me long to realize that. But imprisoning innocent people was wrong, as was the type of interrogation Nicholae was using to “extract information.” He seemed nothing like Mr. Gordon. His actions reminded me more of Kafka.

  “Will you help us?” the older lady asked, still holding the crying woman.

  “I don’t know how,” I said, glancing over at Logan to see if he had any ideas or something to add.

  Logan said nothing.

  “You two lost?” boomed a deep voice behind us.

  I spun around and almost fell backward in the process. Logan’s spin was much more graceful, though he was no more prepared for the visitor.

  Bruno stood in the doorway, taking up most of it with his huge frame, his thick facial hair looking all the more wild from the outside wind.

  “We’re just, umm…” I stuttered.

  “Looking for Nicholae,” Logan said, finishing my sentence. He backed up a step and held up the tablet.

  Bruno studied us and glanced over at the cage, at the two women standing by the bars. They sat back down on the bench with the rest of the prisoners, not saying another word. The younger woman wiped her shiny face with the back of one hand.

  “We thought he’d still be here,” I said once I regained my voice.

  “Well, he’s not,” Bruno said, sternly. His face was tight, his eyes narrow. “What were you all talking about?”

  I saw no reason to lie about the beginning of the conversation. “They were asking us for help—so I listened for a minute.”

  “They’re dangerous and w
ill easily manipulate you.” He shot the cage a glare.

  No one spoke up. I was afraid I’d gotten them into more trouble, but it had been the most believable thing I could think to say.

  “We were just leaving,” Logan said.

  “Don’t come in here without one of us present,” Bruno said, and by us I knew he meant one of Nicholae’s trusted Lornes.

  “Understood,” I said, glancing over at an obediently nodding Logan.

  Bruno led us out of the interrogation building—his gray wolf trailing behind us—through a few turns, and stopped at a door with one wolf posted outside. Ingrid had more brown flecks in her fur than Bruno’s wolf. She greeted us with a human-like nod rather than a growl.

  “Here you go,” Bruno said. I thought he would leave, but he didn’t. He waited behind us as we entered the building, and then followed us in.

  This building was Nicholae’s living quarters. It was smaller than ours and only had one bed instead of rows of bunks. He and Julia sat across from each other at a round wooden table.

  I hovered by the door, but Logan marched up to the table and set down the tablet and tracker before Nicholae.

  “Here you go,” Logan said. “Just as you asked for. This is the bug I embedded in the back of the tablet.” He pointed to the small electronic chip.

  Nicholae picked it up and brought it close to his face, cupping it in his palm. After a moment, he made a fist, and when he reopened his hand, it was empty.

  “And now it’s taken care of,” Nicholae said.

  “That bug was expensive,” Logan said, reaching for his tablet. But Julia swiped it away before he could grab it.

  “That bug was dangerous. Who knows who else was able to tap into its tracking besides you,” she said. She flipped it over and inspected the back and within no time, she’d swiped her finger across the top corner, punched in the code Logan had used, and unclipped the back cover.

  “Pretty cool,” Logan said. “How’d you do that?”

  “Memory imprints in the material,” she said without looking up from her examination. “It’s bug free and safe on this plane because there’s no interlanet signals in this plane. But down below, it can be tracked by the IP address.”