Later, I told myself, trying to find that Zen-like place I’d been in before Regan’s laugh had broken through. I returned to the stairwell and slowed my breathing. I calmed myself, sought full enlightenment…and swore on my life to rip that bitch’s every limb from her brand-new body.
31
“Where have you been?”
Hunter fell into step beside me as I winged past a full-sized stock car where five boys were goading each other on, bright lights and screeching wheels accompanying their raucous yells. The rest of the arcade was empty, the games huddled forlornly in the cavelike room, intermittent beeps punctuating the too-silent air in discontent. I decided now wasn’t the time to clue him in about Regan and Ben. We both needed to focus, and the best thing I could do for Ben was find that serum. “Find the portals?” I asked instead.
“Three of them, one close to the last known entry into the lab. We’ll start there.”
By now we’d hit the casino floor. I was mildly surprised to see how much action the slots were getting, the diehards still getting their fix as the city sank around them. More surprising was the stench, a smell similar to petrol on the fingertips. I was about to ask what it was when I realized the answer was staring me in the face. Nearly every person in the casino was wearing an invisible mask of black smoke…invisible, that was, on their side of reality. On this side their infections were blatant. I saw oblivious people marked for death, blithely pouring money into machines while death poured from their throats, their pores, and out onto the casino floor. My aura could barely be seen through the haze.
“This is disgusting,” I said, trying not to think about all the airborne diseases I wasn’t seeing. Hunter, too busy scanning the room for agents, only grunted something about not kissing them. I grimaced and held my breath for as long as possible.
“There,” he said, pointing. “See it?”
I did. A tiny pinprick of luminosity stood out even above carousels of blinking bulbs and chandeliers splintering light in a thousand different directions.
“The men’s bathroom,” I said, wryly. “Someone has a sense of humor.”
“Maybe I should go in first,” Hunter said, taking the lead. “It could be a trap.”
“Right. So you can blow your cover. That makes sense,” I jostled him with my shoulder to cut off his reply and unholstered my conduit, taking the shooter’s stance as we flanked the doorway. “Besides, I’m the one whose aura is sliming the place like a melted Popsicle.”
His mouth turned down as he watched the color pooling at my still feet, before giving a short nod, and I pivoted into the bathroom. His voice followed me back into the mortal reality. “Use the radio once you get there.”
A sucking noise sounded behind me, the portal sealing shut, and just like that I was back in full Technicolor. I inhaled, whirled, whirled again, quickly ascertaining that I was, for the moment, alone. But where?
Obviously offices of some sort, I thought, once my eyes adjusted to the dimness of the windowless room. Partitioned cubicles, ten in all, stretched across the floor, with a break room smelling of burned popcorn and stale coffee, and half a sheet of uneaten cake in the shared fridge. Closed for the evening, these offices were part of the administration; marketing, accounting, benefits, something like that. I found a stack of applications, a photo ID machine, and cabinets filled with employee files. Human resources. I lifted my radio from my belt and spoke into the receiver.
“How do you feel about birthday cake?”
There was a long pause, then a crackle of static, and Hunter’s voice squawked back. “Is that code for ‘Help, the bad guys got me’?”
“No, it’s code for ‘I’m safe and sound but I’m locked in the HR office and don’t know where to go from here.’”
“Coulda been worse. That’s still the ground floor. I’ll come and get you.”
Three minutes later the lock snicked open on the front office, and Hunter appeared…or almost appeared. His outline materialized in front of me first, a gray-blue shimmer that solidified into lines with no more dimension than a stick figure’s, features sketchy, like a cartoon. Or a comic book. Even as someone who’d traveled both sides of this reality, I don’t think I’d have known he was there if I hadn’t been expecting him.
“Gee, Hunt, you’re looking a little washed out. Chin up, though. I’m sure we’ll have better luck with the next portal.”
He rolled his normally dark eyes, now marbles of arctic ice, and led me down the hall without reply. My wit might have been intact, but my luck didn’t fare as well. Though I made it through the casino in my wig and glasses without attracting notice, the second portal was located inside the storage freezer in the kitchen of Antoine Ferrare, the famous French chef. I hid behind a crate of plates readied to be run through the industrial-sized dishwasher, waiting for the place to clear long enough to make a run for the freezer. It never did, though, and I had to settle for turned backs while Hunter held open the door, a surprised yell following me into deep freeze before the portal sealed shut behind me.
Inside I found low ceilings, fluorescent lighting and stainless steel shelving. I knocked empty cabinet doors closed with my knees, and pushed shut drawers as I made my way around the partition cutting the room in half.
“I’m in,” I said into my radio, then exhaled deeply as I lowered it to my side. I’d found the lab again, but even in the gray-smeared landscape of reality’s flip side, I could see there were no penned-in primates to trumpet my arrival. Both cages and creatures were gone, with only the toxic scent of ammonia to complement the sinking feeling in my stomach.
I told Hunter to wait while I had a look around, though it was more to give me time to overcome my disappointment than out of any hope I’d find anything. I slammed the doors on a metal cabinet and glanced up at the ceiling, down at the floor, and in all four corners to make sure I was missing nothing. Not a vial, not a note, not even the cap to a ball-point pen. I bet if I dusted the place, I wouldn’t find a single print.
“Well?” came Hunter’s prompt over the radio.
“Fastidious fuckers,” I replied, and winced at his responding sigh.
“I don’t know where it is so I can’t come get you.”
“That’s all right,” I said, spotting a tiny star blinking above the exit door. “I’ll find you.”
I sent a final, searching look around the room, cursed again under my breath, and returned to the mortal reality using the same door I had before. This time the anteroom was dark; no alarms to trip, no armed men racing down the stairs to guard against intruders.
And this time there was a vial of etched crystal spotlighted on a coffee table in the center of the room.
I took a step toward it, studying the deep crimson liquid inside. Like blood, I thought, reaching for it. Like the serum, I knew, because I could scent the same yeasty compound now living inside me. My hand had just cleared the outer rim of the spotlight when another opposite me snatched the vial faster than I could blink.
I dropped the radio on the floor while my weapon hand came up, firing eight clean arrows into the dark, hearing some sink into fabric-the couch I’d hidden behind before-and others burrow into flesh. I backed up as I fired until I could duck behind the high desk. My breathing was ragged in the ensuing silence. Damn, not one of my senses had kicked into overdrive. Why hadn’t I known anyone was there?
There was a sucking sound, followed by a rattle. A second followed. Then a third. Movement? Labored breathing? A slow death?
I glanced at the beveled mirror mounted behind the desk, which showed arrows being tossed onto the spotlit table, bloodless, though I knew they’d just come from someone’s body. That someone leaned forward, and though the rest of him remained cloaked in darkness, a grin flashed like the Cheshire cat’s.