by Sophia Sharp
“And that’s why we just ran?”
“Yes,” Hunter confirmed. “The feeling stayed with me until we crossed a threshold four blocks back. I wanted to get farther away before stopping to be sure it was gone.”
“So you’re positive somebody was there?” Alexander asked.
Hunter nodded. “Somebody was watching me.”
“And they weren’t here last time you came?” Nora asked.
“No,” Hunter shook his head. “It’s crazy, I know. But you have to believe me.”
“Of course I do.” Nora took his hands in hers. “You wouldn’t lie about this.” She looked at Alexander. “What do we do now? We have to go back if the repository is in the building.”
“It’s up to you, Nora,” Alexander said. “Personally, I think we have a few options. One, we go back right now. We risk getting caught, or at least noticed, by Hunter’s watchers. I don’t think any of us are eager to find out who they are. Two, we stay until nightfall and try again. Hunter’s first time here was at night, and he didn’t notice the watchers then. Three, we go back and look for the repository elsewhere. There’s a chance it’s not even in the building. But I fear that isn’t much of an option for us.”
“No,” Nora agreed. “We can’t go back empty-handed. Hunter, you said you found a way into the tower? Where?”
“There’s a window on the third story that I noticed wasn’t secured as tightly as the others,” Hunter answered. “If we could scale the building without being seen, I think that could be our ticket in.”
“But we can’t do it in broad daylight, can we?” Nora asked.
“No,” Hunter answered. “We have to get up there, but during the day somebody is bound to notice. Even if there are no watchers.”
“Wait a minute,” Nora said, suddenly coming up with an idea. “You said the watchers were on the roofs, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, what if we go on the roofs, too? We’ll be on the same playing field as them, and I have to think that three Vassiz would have an advantage. Moreover, nobody would notice us from the ground. And Hunter, the window – does it face one of the buildings on a different block?”
“It does,” Hunter said, starting to understand what Nora wanted to do. “You mean to try jumping to the window, don’t you?”
“That’s right,” Nora replied. “We don’t have to worry about how we’re going to scale the side of the building, and we’ll be safe from prying eyes on the ground. And the watchers – whoever or whatever they are – won’t be able to hide there any longer.”
“A brilliant idea,” Alexander said enthusiastically. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it!”
“There’s just one problem,” Hunter said. “The noise. If we do this at night, the sound of us crashing through the boarded window will alert everybody within fifty miles to our presence.”
“I don’t mean to do it at night,” Nora said. “I mean to do it right now, during the day. It’ll make it easy for us to spot the watchers, too, if they’re really there.”
Hunter grimaced. “I’m telling you, there was something…unnatural…about what I felt.”
“Realistically, what’s the worse it can be?” Nora asked. “Another Vassiz or two? We’ll be careful.”
“What about the noise?” Hunter asked. “That’s still a very real problem. Even if we manage to avoid anybody who might be up there, the sound of us crashing through the window will echo through the whole neighborhood.”
“Firecrackers,” Nora answered.
“Firecrackers?”
“You said this is gang territory, right? I say we light a bunch of firecrackers just before we jump. To distract anybody paying attention. If we get enough, it might even sound like gunfire. Amid the confusion, nobody should see us.”
“I have to admit, that does make sense,” Alexander said. “But where are we going to get firecrackers on such short notice?”
Nora smiled. “You leave that to me.”
Chapter Six
~The Repository~
Nora stood on the roof of an old three-story building. She could see the city spread all around her. It stretched out far into the distance, and the tower before her was the only structure standing out amongst the uniformity.
The tops of nearly all the buildings around her were flat. Here and there, a few balconies had been built, but it looked like they had not been used for generations. Nora wondered absently how many people still lived in this region. People gathered on the large streets during the day, some selling wares and others idling, but she knew the majority of the population stayed inside. It was a dangerous neighborhood.
Somewhere close by, the cries of a baby broke out. After a few moments, she heard a man yell in a language she didn’t understand, and the baby went quiet. This was definitely a rough part of town.
In her left hand, she held a bundle of Chinese firecrackers. She had spotted a vendor on one of her earlier expeditions, in fact, she had quizzed him about what he knew of the repository back then, and he was happy to see the “girl with hair like the sun” return for another visit. He was even happier when she offered to buy his loudest, most expensive firecrackers, and offered to pay with American dollars—thanks to Alexander.
So, supplies in hand, Nora stood on the roof, waiting for Hunter and Alexander to return.
She could see them in the distance, jumping from building to building, checking the surroundings to make sure everything was safe. They were circling around the tower, checking every single rooftop for a threat. The watchers were gone, or at least, weren’t visible. Nora wasn’t even sure if they ever existed, but judging by how relieved Hunter had been to find them missing, he shared none of her doubt.
“Ready?” Hunter said behind her, and Nora jumped. She had been so entrenched in her thoughts that she hadn’t noticed him approach. She looked back, and right beside him was Alexander.
“Ready,” Nora confirmed.
“Let’s do it then,” Alexander said.
Nora nodded, and in a second had a lighter in her hand. She lit the fuse to the firecrackers and threw them high into the air. They flew over a row of buildings and fell onto a nearby street.
“GO!” Hunter screamed behind her.
Nora ran. A blast sounded from where the firecrackers had fallen and then they started going off in turn, like dozens of gunshots being fired at once. Nora was impressed at how loud they were. The sound would be heard from hundreds of yards away. Perfect.
She gathered speed, racing toward the tower. They only had a few seconds in which to jump. She went first, as she’d insisted. Hunter had showed her which window it was, and it actually lined up perfectly to the buildings surrounding it. With enough speed, it would be easy to clear the distance and get inside.
As she got closer, Nora realized the outer wall of the tower may have been white mortar once, but had accumulated so much dirt over the years it had become an unpleasant grey. That was the last thought that ran through her mind before she leapt off the side of the building, and flew toward the tower.
The window was nailed shut, but it was covered by a flimsy board. Nora went feet-first into it. The panel shattered, and she was through.
The landing was trickier. She had been expecting a solid floor, but instead was greeted by a stone staircase. She tried to right herself in time, to land accordingly, but it was too late. Before she knew it, she was crashing down the stairs. Instinctively, she made her body go limp so she wouldn’t break anything.
She landed with a heavy thud at the bottom of the stairs. It felt like she had been beaten with a hundred clubs. Groggily, she picked herself up. The pain itself was not unexpected, rather, it was the severity of it that surprised her. She remembered being thrown into stone walls and picking herself up without any pain. Perhaps the effects of her feeding were finally wearing off.
She looked up and saw a shape against the light now streaming through the window. It was Alexander. Unlike her, he ma
naged to catch himself before falling down the stairs. He stepped aside quickly to leave room for Hunter. The light was shielded again, and Hunter came through. Alexander caught him by the shoulders before he had a chance to repeat Nora’s mistake.
“Nora,” Alexander called down, “are you alright?”
“I think so.” She started up the stairs. “I didn’t expect these stairs to be here, though.”
“You have to be careful,” Hunter said gravely when she arrived. “We don’t know what might be in here.”
“I know,” Nora said. Light streamed in from behind them. “We should cover the window. I don’t want anybody outside noticing that the board is broken.”
“Good idea,” Alexander replied. “But with what?”
Nora looked around her. The window they came through opened to a hallway, with the stairs leading down to a lower level. A thick coat of dust covered the floor, and Nora could see the impression she made in it when she fell down the stairs. The entire space was barren of anything useful. “We’ll need to look for something suitable.”
Hunter went a few paces down the hall. He turned to a doorway, and Nora heard a piercing groan as he ripped the door from its frame.
“That’ll do,” Nora said sardonically, as Hunter came back carrying the door. He placed it over the window, blocking most of the light that came from outside. Some still streamed in on the sides.
“It won’t fool an attentive eye from the ground,” Hunter said, “but I doubt there’s going to be anybody looking up here anyway.”
“Besides,” Nora added, “you said all the entrances are barricaded off. Even if somebody did notice, it’s not like they could do anything.”
“Unless they had the keys,” Hunter said. “But we should be safe for now.”
Nora noticed Alexander shifting his weight on his feet. He looked…uncomfortable.
“Is everything alright?” she asked him.
Alexander looked at her. “Something about this place is off.”
“Off? What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. But I can’t shake the feeling that our entrance has been…noted.” He glanced at Hunter. “Let’s hope it doesn’t have anything to do with your watchers.” He barked an uneasy laugh. “Maybe it’s just my imagination getting the better of me.”
“No,” Nora replied. “It’s too much of a coincidence for that. We’d better hurry.”
Alexander nodded. “If we split up, we can search the building faster.”
“But if we stay together, we’re stronger,” Hunter said. “In case anything happens.”
Alexander frowned. “What do you think, Nora?”
“We stay together,” she said. “I don’t want to take any unnecessary risk.”
“Alright,” Alexander agreed. “Together it is.”
“Let’s start on the lower level and work our way up,” Nora said. “We’ll need to check every room. If the repository is in here it’ll probably be hidden or locked away.”
Nora started down the stairs, but Hunter stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
“Let me go first this time,” he said simply.
Nora nodded and fell in behind him.
They followed the stairs all the way to the bottom level. There, they began their search. The entire building was dirty and old. Rats and other vermin left trails that still showed in the dust on the floor, even though the animals had long since disappeared. Nora knew that, since she couldn’t hear any of them between the walls or under the floors. Usually, her hearing was sharp enough to pick out sounds like that.
They went from room to room methodically, tracing out every square inch so nothing would be overlooked. Most of the rooms were empty. The ones that weren’t, however, were mostly filled with old, rotting pieces of furniture covered by musty fabric. Nora wondered what purpose this building had served before. There was nothing to suggest it was ever inhabited as a home. Maybe it had been a storehouse or something of the like.
There was nothing on the first level, or the second, or the third. As they got higher and higher up, the air became thicker and dustier. The heat from the powerful sun penetrated the walls and warmed the air more and more as they got higher, making Nora less and less comfortable. There was something uncanny about the way the dust irritated her airways. Together with the increasing heat, it made for an uncomfortable search.
Some of the doors they encountered were barred with locks, but unlike the ones on the outside of the building, these locks had grown frail and brittle with age. It didn’t take much force to open any of them. Each time they found a door like that, Nora’s heart skipped a beat, because a part of her hoped to find the repository on the other side. Each time, however, she was bitterly disappointed.
It was only on the fourth level that they encountered something that didn’t fall into the category of old furniture or discarded rubbish. At the end of a long, narrow room, stood a single wooden chest. The rest of the room was empty, as if to emphasize the chest’s presence.
Nora approached it carefully. She was conscious of the age of the building. There had already been a few incidents where the weight of one of her steps caused the wood beneath her feet to groan and nearly give. Alexander and Hunter both experienced the same thing.
“Do you think this might be it?” Nora asked, as she stood before the chest. “The way Rafael made it sound, I was expecting an entire storeroom full of torrial.”
“It could be,” Hunter said, “and it could be not. Let’s be careful opening it either way. We don’t know what any of these devices can do.”
“Alright,” Nora agreed. She bent down to the chest, but again, Hunter stopped her.
“Let me do it.” The conviction in his voice told Nora not to argue.
She stepped back, and Hunter approached the chest. He bent down to one knee and began to examine it. From what Nora could see, it was solidly built. It was about the size of an oven, and made of heavy oak. Two iron handles jutted out from either side, and a large iron latch was bolted on the front. There was no lock.
Hunter lifted the latch, glanced back at her and Alexander, and opened the top.
Inside was…nothing. Only a black emptiness.
“Dammit,” Hunter growled. He stood up. “The thing is empty!”
“We still have—” Nora started, but then stopped short. A dark shadow caught her eye. It was balled up inside the chest, and just then slipped out over the edge. It slid toward a corner and disappeared. The whole sequence happened so quickly Nora wasn’t sure if she was seeing things. “Did anybody see that?”
“See what?” Hunter asked.
“When you stood up, I could have sworn…” She moved closer to the chest to look inside. The inside was empty. “I thought I saw something inside.”
Hunter walked over to her and peered down. “I don’t see anything.”
“It’s gone now, but—”
“I don’t see anything either, Nora.” Alexander frowned at the chest. “Since there was no lock, I doubt there ever was anything inside.”
“Neither of you saw anything?” Nora questioned. “I thought I saw a…shadow…come out of the chest. It was just a spot in my vision, darker than the rest. It slid out over the edge and toward that wall.” Nora pointed where she thought it had gone. “Or did I imagine it?”
“I didn’t see anything, Nora,” Hunter repeated.
“Nor did I.” Alexander sounded concerned. “Still, that’s no reason to doubt your—”
“I’m not even sure if I really did see it, though,” Nora admitted.
“Either way. Like I said when we got in, this place makes me uneasy. Let’s finish the search on the upper levels and be gone.”
Nora nodded. “All right. Let’s hope the repository is up there.”
They left the room and continued their search along the other parts of the fourth story. Finding nothing, they made their way up to the fifth. Every single room on that level was littered with junk, more than anything they had
encountered earlier. Old furniture and china, abandoned clothes and personal belongings, yellowing books and other discarded paraphernalia. One room contained nothing but old grandfather clocks, all ticking but showing different times. The noises they made nearly drove Nora mad. She had to let the others search that room without her.
The finished their scope of the fifth level with the same result as before and moved on to the sixth. This was the second-to-last story of the building, and Nora was starting to lose hope. Maybe Hunter had been mistaken – maybe the repository wasn’t in this building at all. But then, what could explain all the uncanny happenings that had occurred so far? Hunter’s watchers, Alexander’s feeling of disquietude, and her own apparently imagined shadow? She had thought they were all linked and somehow signaled the presence of the repository. Perhaps that was the wrong conclusion.
The air on the sixth level was absolutely stifling. Every time Nora moved, the dust swirled around her like a fog. It wreaked havoc on her senses. Hunter and Alexander didn’t share her troubles to the same degree. Or, at least, they were better at covering them up. While they continued the search, methodically moving from room to room, Nora was constantly on the lookout for the dark shadow. She didn’t know if it was just paranoia from being in this place too long, but she wanted to make sure that shadow didn’t return. Or, if it did, that it wouldn’t catch her by surprise.
“Nothing,” Hunter exclaimed sourly, breaking her out of her thoughts. “We’ve scavenged the entire floor and found nothing!”
“We can’t give up hope yet,” Nora said, with a confidence she did not feel. “There’s one more level to go.”
“And what if it’s not there?” Hunter demanded dejectedly. “What if we’ve been wasting our time this whole expedition?”
“Then we go back and regroup at the tent with Madison and Jacob,” Nora said levelly. “And go from there.” She prayed desperately that wouldn’t be the case. They had wasted too much time in Egypt searching fruitlessly for the repository, and it would absolutely crush her morale if they didn’t find it now. She shook her head roughly. No use thinking about an uncertain future when the present wasn’t yet defined. “Let’s go up.”
