Nick turned the knob; they looked at each other in surprise when it opened.
“Lyle?” said Nick, calling inside. “You in the house, buddy?”
They moved into the wood-paneled inspection room. Empty. Nick knocked on the inner door. “Yoo-hoo, Marshal Lyle!”
No response. Nick tried the door. Locked. He took a device from his pocket and picked the lock in less than five seconds, then smiled sheepishly at Will.
“Kind of a neighborhood skill,” he said.
They entered Lyle’s suite. The front room centered on an L-shaped desk lined with six monitors showing views from security cameras around Greenwood Hall. A bookshelf filled with rows of twelve-inch spiral notebooks stood against one wall. Above that, a metal rack screwed into the wall held sealed plastic containers. Will found one with his name labeled on it and saw his iPhone and laptop inside.
Nick opened the door to Lyle’s bedroom and switched on the light. He recoiled from something inside. Will joined him and caught a whiff of foul air.
“You ever smell anything that disgusting before?” asked Nick.
“Three times now,” said Will, stepping inside. When the monsters show up.
“Either he stuffed a dead fish with rotten eggs marinated in raw sewage,” said Nick, “or this dipstick needs a shower worse than anyone on the planet.”
Will tracked the smell to the bedroom closet. He opened the door. Behind a rack of clothes, Nick uncovered a poster-sized sheet of superthin metal attached to the wall, embossed with rows of small, indecipherable glyphs. When Nick waved a hand near it, the closest glyphs lit up, illuminated from within.
“What the hell is this thing?” asked Nick.
“No idea,” said Will. He snapped a picture of it with his phone camera.
Sticking out from under a pile of Lyle’s stuff deeper in the closet was the corner of a trunk made of high-tech black carbon fiber. “Check this out,” Nick said.
He pulled the trunk into the open. It was rectangular, fairly shallow, with a handle on top. Will leaned over to look at it and his eyes started burning.
“That smell’s coming from here,” said Will.
“Let’s leave him a note: ‘Dude, bad news: Your ferrets died. Buy some Lysol.’ ”
They had to cover their noses and mouths against the stink. Will undid the catch and opened the lid. Inside were neat rows of black mesh containers in three sizes: some the size of matchboxes, others shaped like thermoses, others long and skinny like spaghetti boxes. All had more of the strange glyphs on them.
Nick reached for one of the thermoses and something jumped at him inside it with enough force to dent the mesh. “What the hell,” he said, yanking his hand away.
Will slammed the trunk shut and kicked it into place. “We’re out of here.”
Nick followed him back into the office. “What’s in those canisters?”
“I’m not sure, but I saw a Black Cap carrying one outside my house in Ojai.”
“Maybe we should ask him.” Nick pointed at one of the monitors on Lyle’s desk.
Lyle Ogilvy had just stepped inside the building.
They dashed outside and made it into the hallway as Lyle came around the corner. He looked deathly pale, his eyes red and strained. His winter coat increased his bulk, and he had a thick wool scarf wrapped around his neck. He carried a paper bag that was soaked at the bottom, greasy liquid oozing through the seams. Strangest of all, instead of shooting them the evil eye, Lyle didn’t even look at them.
“Hey, Lyle, how’s it going?” asked Nick.
Lyle stopped and turned. He barely seemed to register they were there. He walked into his office, quietly closed the door, and locked it from inside.
“What is up with Uncle Fester?” said Nick softly, spooked.
“Beats me,” said Will. “Looks like he’s got the flu. Let’s go talk to Ajay. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”
“I’ll make a food run,” said Nick, heading for the door. “Chinese takeout?”
“Yes,” said Will.
OceanofPDF.com
FLASH
It was five-thirty when Will entered their pod. Ajay sat at the table scarfing a bowl of cereal. Will filled him in about Todd and the other seniors on the cross-country team and the likelihood that they might be the Knights. He also told him about what he and Nick had just found in Lyle’s closet.
“What’s in those containers?” asked Ajay.
“I think it’s more of the … you know,” said Will, suddenly self-conscious.
“Monsters?” said Ajay, his eyes widening. “You know, Will, I want to believe everything you’ve told us, but you’re the only one who’s seen any of them so far.”
“If you’re lucky, that won’t change,” said Will.
“Well, I have a lot to show you, too,” said Ajay, taking his dish to the kitchen. “Meet me in my room. Bring your tablet.”
Will hurried to his room. His tablet sat up on his desk, a screen saver of the crest floating in a liquid blue field. He stopped when it dissolved to black, then faded up on a replica of his room. A young man sat at the desk with his back to Will, working at his tablet.
The figure turned. It was Will’s syn-app, fully fleshed. He had the same face, hair, and clothes as Will, except for a different-color shirt, light gray to Will’s blue. Then—after the syn-app saw Will—his shirt changed color to match his exactly.
It was like looking in a mirror, but not quite. The figure appeared smooth around the edges, slightly vague, like a nearly finished sketch. Computer Will met Will’s eye and smiled, as if he had been waiting for him.
The syn-app waved. Will hesitated, then waved back. He thought about asking the figure to stand, so thrown by this eerie thing that he felt the syn-app needed to move so he could reach his real tablet. “Will” stood and stepped away from the desk, smiling agreeably and awaiting Will’s next instruction.
Did he just hear me think that?
“Okay, that’s a little creepy,” said Will. “Shut down.”
“Would you like me to run a system security check, Will?” asked Will in a spooky simulation of his own voice.
“Not right now—”
“I highly recommend you let me perform a—”
“I said not now. Shut down.”
“Will” snapped his fingers and the screen went black. The legs folded into the frame and the tablet settled down flat on the desk. Will warily picked it up. Holding it like a ticking bomb, he hurried to Ajay’s room, knocked, announced himself, and heard Ajay open the locks before the door opened.
“Come in quickly,” said Ajay.
Ajay closed and locked the door behind them, noting the cautious way Will carried in his tablet.
“I take it your doppelgänger has finally arrived,” said Ajay.
“This thing’s freaking me out.”
“Perfectly natural reaction. I couldn’t even stay in the same room with mine at first. Set it on the desk next to mine. We’ll need it.”
Gauzy sheer panels of material hung down from the ceiling of Ajay’s room. Big soft throw pillows covered the floor. An animated wall poster of the periodic table adorned one wall, molecules lazily circling around each other. Ajay’s desk stood under a suspended muslin pyramid covered with bright red satin. A printed banner spanned the bookshelf above the desk:
OceanofPDF.com
GOD DOES NOT PLAY DICE WITH THE UNIVERSE.
—EINSTEIN
Will set his tablet next to Ajay’s. Ajay’s double sat on-screen in a precise reproduction of Ajay’s room, working at his desk.
“Power on,” said Will to his tablet.
His screen lit up. Will’s double reappeared, now in the same virtual version of Ajay’s room. “Ajay” greeted him with pleased surprise, hurried toward him—moving from his screen to Will’s!—and shook “Will’s” hand.