“What’s at this other exit?” asked Aleksandra.
“Another world!” exclaimed Termin, throwing his hands up in excitement. “Think of that!”
“How do you know?”
“The operative who mapped the Original saw a sky and felt the breeze from the other exit, though he could not manage to climb out into it. You did, in the Replica.”
“What if I can’t get back?” asked Aleksandra. “I might get killed by something in this ‘other world’. Or what if I’m too slow and the Violet phase–whatever that is–gets me.”
“If you allow that to happen, then your family will suffer the consequences,” said Shargei. “But if you do well, they will prosper. It is your—”
Aleksandra pivoted on her heel and sliced the throat of the closest guard with her saw-blade knife, blood spraying in a high arc across Termin. As the guard clutched at his throat, gargling, she snatched his PPSh-41 submachine gun, cocked it and fired one swift, sweeping burst, killing the other three guards. She swung the weapon back on Shargei as he scrabbled at his pistol holster and emptied the drum into his head, catapulting him against the door of the narrow building. He rebounded off it and slid to the ground, essentially decapitated.
Termin made a pathetic, mewling noise.
Aleksandra ignored him. She threw down the PPSh-41 and picked up her knife, tucking it back behind her ear. She turned the key in the padlock, snapped it open and slipped it out of the catch.
Behind her, a siren sounded, a call to action. Quicker than she’d thought. Gunshots must not be as common here as in other camps. It was followed a moment later by distant shouts, and the baying of dogs.
Termin continued his strange mewling noise.
“Shut up!” barked Aleksandra. “I’m not going to kill you.”
The Academician choked, coughed and managed to splutter out, “Why? They will kill your family—”
“They’re already dead,” said Aleksandra bleakly. “Yours too, probably. Is it safe to open?”
Termin looked at his watch and nodded.
She opened the door, blinking at the bizarre sight of a tunnel made of luminous orange… orange air… suspended in the air at head height, extending through the back of the building as if the wooden wall didn’t exist. Though she knew from the Replica the tunnel only extended several metres before turning, it looked as if it went on forever, straight as a die.
She dragged Shargei’s body over, took off his Rolex and strapped it on her ankle, then stood on his chest, to make it easier to haul herself up into the tunnel entrance.
The shouting was getting closer, and the sound of the dogs.
“Y-y-ou’re… g-g-oing through?” stuttered Termin.
“Obviously,” said Aleksandra. She pushed up on her toes and threw herself up and into the tunnel, at the same time slipping her left arm out of its socket so she would not get stuck.
“If you come back, and tell me… tell us… I think… I think… you’d be forgiven,” shouted Termin, his voice desperate. “I’m sure!”
His voice was drowned out by a sudden growling and barking and Termin’s voice rose an octave.
“No! No! Not me! It was her—”
Aleksandra undulated easily forward. The sides of the tunnel did flex under her skin, a little, and felt like nothing she had ever moved through before. Not cloth, or timber, or metal. The description of “velvet” was close, but still not right. And there was a faint sensation, like static electricity, a mild discomfort where her skin touched the tunnel.
The sweeping left turn was no problem. Aleksandra didn’t even need to dislocate her right shoulder. The corkscrew turns were a challenge, but no more difficult than in the Replica, though she was glad of the daily back bends and contortion rolls she had done at the camp, keeping her spine supple.
The right and immediate left turn was difficult. Even with both shoulders dislocated, Aleksandra felt herself beginning to stick and slow down. The weird orange surface wasn’t the same as the cork-lined steel. For a moment she felt a tinge of panic, but she forced it away and managed to continue on, to Junction A and beyond.
She couldn’t help thinking about what Vladimir had said the Red or the Violet light could do. He had only been a few seconds too slow, his lower body still in the Original as he struggled to get out. But that had been enough. His legs had been cooked from the bones outward, requiring immediate amputation, and his upper body–even though out of the tunnel–had suffered something similar to the flash burns they both knew from the war.
Aleksandra forced those thoughts away, to concentrate on her progress. From Junction A it was easy going for a while, until she came to a series of very close right-angle turns that required her to bend at maximum extension from neck and waist, in opposite directions.
Halfway through, Aleksandra got stuck.
She couldn’t move forward or back, she needed just a few millimetres more behind her shoulders and under her hips, and that space wasn’t there.
The panic came back, and again she forced it away. She thought about the other things Vladimir had told her, and simply waited, slowing her breathing, letting her mind and body relax.
After a long minute, perhaps two, the deep, solid light all around her suddenly changed from orange to yellow, and the sensation of static electricity disappeared. The tunnel was suddenly warm now, the luminous, otherworldly surfaces felt like a stone floor warmed by summer sun.
There was also now more flex in the tunnel. The material gave way far more than in the Orange phase, much more than the thick cork lining of the Replica.
But even with the extra flex, Aleksandra only managed to wriggle and writhe forward five or six centimetres before she ran into the section where the tunnel ahead turned back on itself. It had been almost impossible in the Replica, and she had gouged the cork lining there. It would be actually impossible here unless something else Vladimir told her was true.
“Oh Vova,” whispered Aleksandra, and though she had not believed in God for many years, she uttered a short prayer that her mentor had not confused the extraordinary reality of the Original with morphine hallucinations.
She pushed her face into the side of the tunnel, hard into the yielding surface of yellow light, until her nose was crushed flat and her mouth was buried in whatever mysterious material the tunnel was made from.
It shouldn’t have been possible to breathe, but she believed Vladimir and tried anyway, and cool air came whistling through her just-open mouth, even though it was pressed tight against what seemed to be a solid wall.
With her face and body pushed into the side, Aleksandra had just enough additional working room to squeeze around the three close right angles, with every segment of her backbone seeming to move independently to urge her forward, like a worm’s concentric rings.
She moved faster after the triple bend, remembering what was ahead from the Replica. The tunnel, at least in its current state and without the extra difficult turns, was easier than the cork and cold steel, and Aleksandra felt she was ahead of the deadline, moving well.
Then the light changed again, to green, and she paused, struck by the change. She could no longer press her face or any part of herself into the tunnel sides, which had become much more rigid. Worse than that, it felt like the walls were intruding into her flesh, a multitude of tiny little needles touching her skin, pressing against it without actually drawing blood.