Ms. Rundleford largely ignored his questions, but was suddenly paying a great deal of unnerving attention to the space about four or five inches to the left of his crotch. Pierre looked down and laughed, dryly.
‘Ah. These beauties,’ he said, unclipping the keyring from his belt and dangling it between the two of them, ‘are the master keys for every door and lock in the hotel.’
And a great many doors beyond that, he might have added. Though most of the keys were of the traditional silver and bronze variety (plus a fob, because the times kept a-changing), one particularly gold and shiny key stood out as more… influential than all the rest.
‘Impressive, eh? But I bet you get to see all kinds of nice keyrings in your line of work.’
The reflection of the keys swam alongside her pupils in the goldfish bowls that were her lenses. One of her pink-nailed hands reached out for them. ‘May I…?’ she asked.
‘Nope,’ said Pierre, pulling them back towards him. ‘No can do, I’m afraid. Trade rules. I’m the only one allowed to handle them when they’re out of the safe, unless somebody authorised signs them out. And it takes a lot to get somebody authorised, let me tell you. You’ll have to look but not touch. Sorry.’
‘Oh, come on,’ said Ms. Rundleford, batting her heavy and half-obscured eyelashes. They succeeded at wafting her pungent perfume towards him if nothing else. ‘Who’s going to tell? You? Me? It’ll be our little secret. And who knows - maybe it’ll get me out of your hair a little sooner. How does that sound?’
It did sound tempting. And it wasn’t as if any of the guests would know she wasn’t supposed to be in possession of them.
But, rules are rules.
But…
But maybe it was a test. Maybe this was exactly the sort of mistake the damn Council wanted to catch him out on!
He was about to proudly rebut her request for a second time when something caught his eye. No, it wasn’t the dust building up over the tulip lamp growing out from the wall beside his head. And no, it wasn’t the way the edge of the carpet peeled up against the side of room 425’s door.
Oh, no. It was nothing so welcomingly trivial as that.
It was a goddamn Mongolian horde, charging down the corridor.
Well, not quite a Mongolian horde, perhaps. More of a drunken Mongolian entourage. And they didn’t so much charge down the corridor as they did rush down it, driven forward more by a lack of vertical balance than by any sort of furiousness. Their flappy, furry helmets weren’t doing them any favours in regard to walking in a straight line. Instead of a sword, one of them was brandishing an orange traffic cone.
Against Pierre’s strict and very clear curfew instructions, it appeared the trio of time-displaced Khan-dynasty acolytes had only just got in after a particularly eventful night on the streets of Soho.
‘You know what?’ he said, rifling through the keys for the master set that could unlock all of the guest rooms. He jabbed one of them towards the keyhole of room 427’s door. Ms. Rundleford had been turning to look at the three drunken warriors but the sound of jangling metal returned her attention to his hand. Her eyes shimmered in shades of silver and gold. ‘Let’s use one of them now, shall we? I’m sure this will be an interesting room. Full of lots of very normal hotel room things, no doubt. Fresh bed linen and complimentary chocolates on the pillows. And no guests, with any luck.’
Ms. Rundleford reached out for the keyring as if in a trance, the way a cat might paw at a shiny thing dangled in front of its face.
‘Much more interesting than anything going on our here,’ laughed Pierre, nervously, oblivious to the inspector’s fascination. His mind was preoccupied with getting the key to go into the lock, and with the sight and sound of one of the Mongolian warriors trying to drunkenly dislodge one of the paintings from the wall.
The key turned in the lock, and he threw the door open.
‘In you go, Ms. Rundleford,’ he said, pushing her into the room. She stumbled forwards with a surprised yelp. All the while Pierre kept his eyes on the three semi-armoured men, who were turning back on themselves having come to the realisation that they weren’t even staying on the fourth floor. Breathing a sigh of relief, he turned back to the inspector. ‘As you can see, we maintain all of our guest rooms to the highest possible…’
Well, this was a problem.
Where should have been a classic Le Petit Monde hotel room with a double bed, modest walk-in wardrobe and rain shower, was not one. Pierre didn’t think that even in a multiverse of infinite possibilities and permutations, there was ever a universe where a Le Petit Monde room looked like the one into which he was staring.
He glanced down at the keys in his hand… and at the special, golden key he’d mistakenly used to unlock the door.
‘Oh bugger,’ he said.
Ms. Rundleford was still in front of him, at least. And alive, too. That was a start. But there wasn’t a chaise longue to speak of. There wasn’t even a carpet. There was, however, a large and mostly empty hall decorated almost exclusively in concrete, save for a few stains of the dry and suspicious variety. There was an upturned wooden chair and some ropes. Oh, and half a dozen armed Asian men in smart suits standing around the bemused Tabitha, all looking at Pierre with expressions that could most accurately be described as volatile.
The air smelled of copper and gasoline.
Pierre cleared his throat.
‘Gentlemen, my deepest apologies for the interruption,’ he said. He offered his hand to the inspector. ‘Ms. Rundleford, if you would just slowly walk back towards me…’
One of the Japanese men was quite a bit older than the others; his hair was tied back in a ponytail and his thin moustache and beard were sharp enough to cut glass. A pale scar ran down the side of his chin. He turned to his subordinates and shouted something at them in Japanese. It didn’t sound all that friendly. A lot of pistols were raised in his direction, which didn’t seem very friendly either.
Faced with the prospect of trying to negotiate with a hail of bullets, Pierre used his outstretched hand to wrench the hotel door closed again. The latch clicked just as the first gunshot rang out on the other side. He could still smell the lingering odour of petrol, blending poorly with the hotel’s signature bergamot perfume.
He stood there in the sudden quiet, staring at the numbers on the door. Not in the sudden silence, which would have been better, but the quiet - elsewhere, doors were being opened and closed as guests prepared to check out. As they went about their usual business.
After a while somebody walked past him, dragging a little wheelie suitcase along the carpet.
He was probably going to have to do something about this.
Chapter Four
‘Er, guys? I have some good news, and I have some bad news.’
Wesker and Viola looked up from the bar, which was empty save for one round-faced man who sat quietly in the corner, reading his morning paper and sipping his coffee. Wesker might not have had any qualms about serving liquor before eleven in the morning, but the hotel sure did.
Pierre had come in through the open double doors which, if one followed the subsequent corridor, led back out to the lobby (and, to Pierre’s small relief, a much shorter queue at the reception desk than when he’d left it). Viola spun around on her bar stool to greet him; Wesker stood up straight having been leaning against the counter. There were bags under his eyes.
‘Start with the good news,’ he said, his words coming out in even more of a tired drawl than his Wild West accent normally produced. ‘Not that the good news is ever actually that good, mind. Usually it’s just best to get it outta the way before we have to deal with whatever’s the real matter.’
‘Well,’ said Pierre, drawing the syllable out for as long as possible as he planted himself on the stool next to Viola’s, ‘the good news is that the inspection has come to an end and Ms. Rundleford has left the hotel.’
‘Thank God for that,’ laughed Viola, breaking out into a grin. She slapped
the top of the counter, nearly knocking over her orange juice. ‘Oh, man. I was so sure she was here to catch me out, or something. So, go on. What’s the bad news?’
Pierre looked down at the polished chrome bar upon which his equally polished shoes were tapping.
‘I may have accidentally opened one of the, you know, doors, and, erm, accidentally pushed her through it, and now she’s in the custody of the Yakuza,’ he said, not taking his eyes off his shoelaces.
‘What?’ shouted Viola. The man sipping his coffee in the corner looked up from his newspaper and raised a disapproving eyebrow. ‘What the bloody hell did you do that for?’
‘I didn’t mean to!’ hissed Pierre. ‘I already said it was an accident! I panicked, alright? There was a goddamn Mongolian horde coming down the corridor at us and I didn’t know what to do. I only meant to push her into one of the guest bedrooms, not shove her onto another continent.’
Wesker brought down a glass from the shelf overhead, filled it with a dram of whiskey, and plonked it down in front of Pierre. Rules be damned.
‘Well, is she okay?’ asked Wesker.
Pierre shrugged and downed his drink in one. ‘Who knows? She was alive when I shut the door on her, but that might have only been because they were all too busy pointing their guns at me.’
‘Oh this is not going to look good on our hotel rating, is it?’ groaned Wesker, pouring a drink first for Viola and then himself. ‘The Council is going to have our license for sure.’
‘Might have to do a runner,’ Pierre suggested. He pushed his glass forward and Wesker pushed it back, just as empty. ‘I wonder if there’s anywhere they couldn’t track me down. There probably is, right? Surely they can’t canvass the entire multiverse.’
‘Find a nice beach somewhere,’ mused Wesker, putting the bottle of whiskey back on its shelf. ‘Or a whole planet of beaches.’
‘Don’t know why I didn’t become a fugitive sooner, to be honest.’
‘Oh, come on,’ laughed Viola, giving Pierre’s shoulder a brutal squeeze. ‘Don’t be so melodramatic. Shit happens, right? I mean, what’s the worst the Council will do if they find out?’
Pierre and Wesker shared a knowing glance.
‘They could send me to the Space Between Worlds,’ said Pierre, leaning on the bar with his head buried in his hands.
Viola looked at Wesker, whose face looked no more optimistic than Pierre’s. ‘Erm, sorry. What the hell is the Space Between Worlds?’
‘Easier to say what it’s not,’ groaned Pierre. ‘Which is everything. I mean, what does it sound like? It’s the space in between the universes. There’s nothing there. Just an empty, spaceless stretch of infinite nothingness. Better to plead for death, if the option’s on the table.’
‘It won’t come to that,’ said Wesker, in a scolding but unsure tone. He turned to Viola. ‘But Pierre’s right. It ain’t a nice place. Well it’s not even really a place at all, technically.’
‘The Council of Keys has been sending delinquents there ever since the beginning,’ continued Pierre. ‘Not your run of the mill bad guys, mind. They don’t get involved in anything so trivial as bike-theft, for example. But tie a knot in the space-time continuum, or set up a dictatorship in a universe that isn’t your own, or, say, push a run-of-the-mill hotel inspector through an Einstein-Rosen bridge into the arms of an international crime syndicate, and boy, are you in trouble.’
‘They come down particularly hard on anyone to whom they’ve entrusted a set of keys,’ added Wesker, speaking out the side of his mouth even though Pierre could clearly hear every word that he spoke. ‘They’ve always had a stick up their ass about that sort of thing. Makes them look bad, putting their trust in the wrong person.’
‘Particularly if that person has recently allowed a guest to become an inter-universe fugitive after killing a parallel version of himself,’ Pierre sighed.
‘And to think,’ mused Viola, ‘that George seemed like such a nice, quiet man.’
‘It’s not even the endless nothingness that’s the worst part, from what I’ve heard,’ said Wesker, breaking the silence before it even had a chance to build up. ‘It’s who you’d have to spend it with. Way back in the early days - not all that long after it first started meeting, in fact - the Council banished an entire species there. Right, Pierre?’
‘That’s how the story goes,’ he mumbled.
‘Imagine being a species so awful that you have to be shut away from the rest of the multiverse,’ continued Wesker, shaking his head. ‘Legend has it they were these vicious, monstrous creatures that spread from one world to another like the Black Death. Only way to stop them from eradicating everything was to send them someplace from which nothing could escape. Nothing save for someone with a door and a set of those keys, at least. Or an untangled octowürm, but those things get everywhere.
‘Great bloody company,’ moaned Pierre, dragging his hands down his face. ‘And an eternity in which to enjoy it.’
‘I imagine they had a proper name, once,’ said Wesker, thinking out loud. ‘Now they’re only known as the Gatecrashers. On account of overrunning planets and ruining everyone’s fun.’
‘Well I’m no expert on the matter,’ said Viola, pulling Pierre’s hands away from his face, ‘but it doesn’t sound like the sort of place I want you going to. I’m not done with you quite yet. Come on, boys. Surely there’s something we can do?’
‘We could try to get her back,’ said Wesker, reluctantly. ‘Or a version of her, at least. There must be at least one universe where all the Japanese gangsters dropped dead from surprise upon Ms. Rundleford’s arrival. Or one in which you pushed her into an all-inclusive tropical resort instead.’
‘Yeah, and what happens when we bring her back?’ asked Pierre, rolling his eyes. ‘Let’s say we manage to convince this new Tabitha Rundleford that she’s been in the hotel all along - which I seriously doubt she’ll believe, even for a woman with her eyesight. What if our universe is different from her own? How do we explain the lack of flying cars, or whatever?’
‘Okay, so we rescue the original,’ replied Viola, getting down from her bar stool. ‘We bring her back, we either explain what happened or make up some bullshit story, and then we deal with whatever aftermath comes, well, after. A confused or mind-frazzled inspector must be worth more than a dead one, at least.’
‘I mean, what did the Council expect would happen?’ Wesker added, shrugging. ‘Sending a normal to take a look at the hotel of all things.’
‘Oh no.’ Pierre shook his head. ‘Not this again. You didn’t see those henchmen, guys. You didn’t see how quick they were to pull their triggers in my direction. Nope. Too dangerous. Nope. Not doing it. That woman wasn’t even very nice towards me.’
‘I thought you said a death sentence was better than being sent to the Space Between Worlds?’ said Viola, already waiting in the doorway. Wesker walked around the side of the bar to join them.
Pierre sagged as he let out a resigned sigh.
‘Yes,’ he grumbled, sliding off his stool, ‘but at least with certain death you know what you’re in for. It’s uncertain death that scares me.’
The three of them stood before the door to room 427, none of them saying very much. Even though they knew that to open it would lead them nowhere further than an empty and mundane (though impeccably tasteful) hotel room, they couldn’t help but feel the power emanating from the door’s wood.
Well, Wesker and Viola perhaps. Pierre mostly just felt guilty.
‘I’ve never been to Japan before,’ said Viola, after a while. ‘Is it different?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will I like it?’
‘I don’t know.’ Pierre glanced up at her. ‘Probably. We don’t have to do this, you know.’
‘Yeah we do,’ said Wesker, slapping him on the back. ‘We can’t just sit back and wait for the Council to tear you a new one. And even if we come back empty handed, at least we can say we tried.’
‘Can w
e at least wait for a bit?’ asked Pierre, scratching the back of his neck. ‘You know that booze and portals don’t mix well.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ laughed Viola. ‘You only had the one drink. And the sooner we go, the sooner nobody else finds out what happened. Get your keys ready.’
‘I need to find out where we’re going first,’ said Pierre, approaching the door. He placed a hand on its surface and felt for the space-time vibrations that are left behind by all forms of multiverse travel. Each time and place carries its own unique frequency; if he could find it, then with any luck he could get a bearing on where the door had last opened. It was kind of like trying to trace a phone call.
‘I’ve narrowed it down to a district in Tokyo,’ he said glumly, taking a step back. ‘Hard to be exact, especially given they must have shot the original door on their end to pieces. At least the timing should be about right, plus or minus a few minutes.’
He slipped the keyring off his belt and from its many keys picked out the incriminating, golden one.
‘Why don’t we…?’
‘Get on with it, for crying out loud,’ snapped Viola, shoving him back to the door.
Pierre took another moment to read the door’s vibrations, then slipped the key into the lock and turned it.
‘Excuse me? Pierre?’ came a young and urgent voice from the other end of the corridor.
All three of them looked up to see Ashley hurrying over from the elevator. Viola sighed and rolled her eyes.
‘What is it, Ashley?’ asked Pierre.
‘So, I got hold of the Council like you asked,’ she started, out of breath. ‘And I… er… well, I think they want a word with you. On the phone. Like, now.’
Wesker and Pierre looked at one another.
‘Sounds like they already know, Pierre,’ said Wesker, pushing open the door to room 427. ‘Better get a move on.’
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