by Gwenda Bond
Not if I hurried.
I considered my options. The door probably had an automatic lock. Maybe the double had a key or a code or a card or something that scanned him in.
Probably I wouldn’t be able to follow, even if it was a good idea. Which I knew it wasn’t.
I tested the metal handle, cool against my fingers. It resisted.
My phone buzzed once more in my bag, but I continued to ignore it. The only result that could come from reading the messages was to abort this mission. So, instead, I dug out the lock pick tools I’d borrowed from Dad, which I hadn’t exactly returned yet. I unfolded the end into its longest skinny tool form, then slipped it up the side of the door and then back down. If the catch didn’t let go easily, I’d take it as a sign to turn tail and get back in the cab.
I felt it give within seconds. That was a sign too.
But… was I really doing this? Following this strange doppelmayor into a crime den?
I was in so far over my head already one more inch of hot water wouldn’t matter. That was what I told myself.
The answer was yes. I was doing this.
“Open sesame,” I said, tugging the handle.
I went inside quickly, guiding the door gently shut behind me.
After all, what choice did I have? This was my job, whether it was hard or easy—following a lead wherever it went, bringing Perry the something I’d promised, something that would allow me to tell him the whole story and be believed. If I was lucky.
Which I wasn’t.
Ever.
I blinked, letting my eyes grow accustomed to the low light.
Two sets of grand stairs wove between the three floors, almost like a double helix of DNA, with one wood-and-frosted-glass door at the center of each landing where they met. This must have been an artsy deco paradise in its heyday. It still possessed plenty of rundown glory; brass and dark wood, stained glass, and probably whispering ghosts.
There was no sign of the double down here. But then, the third floor was where the light had been on.
An elevator waited on one wall, but it was dark. And even if it had been working, someone above seeing the lights or hearing the noise as it traveled would have been too much to risk. Instead, I hesitated between choosing the left or right staircase, and made a quick examination of each side.
The one on the left had traces of dirt up the middle of the wood and more scuff marks. The one on the right was coated in a light film of dust.
Right side it was. If someone came down while I was here, hopefully they’d stick to the other staircase. I crept up the stairs like I was the quiet ghost haunting this shell. I placed my feet with care on each step, moving up and up and up as soundlessly as I could manage. At the landing, I scurried to the next set of steps, limiting how long I’d be exposed if anyone stepped out of the top floor’s entrance.
The closer I got to the top, the more an antiseptic, almost hospital-like smell wafted down to sting my nose. The bright chemical scent layered on top of whatever decay it was meant to cover up.
The odor wasn’t the only thing I noticed.
There were voices coming from the third floor. But I forced myself to stay slow, steady, quiet. And, finally, I was close enough to make out the words.
“Here, take your meds, they’ll make you feel better. Keep you fit and fine.” The voice was a man’s and gruff.
“They always do.” The next man’s voice was flat, even, average—nothing distinctive about it per se—and also familiar. I tried to place it and then realized it was like James’s dad’s voice, but with all the emotion ironed out of it, all the politician inflections gone. The voice sounded tired.
There was a series of beeps and a brief sound like rushing water. Then the conversation resumed.
“I looked at your tracking data. You went somewhere you weren’t supposed to today.” The gruff-voiced man indulged in a lengthy pause, before demanding: “Why?”
“Well,” said the voice that I thought belonged to the double.
“‘Well’ is not an explanation,” the other man countered.
“I went right where you told me. But when I was reporting back, I got confused. I went to the old place. Then I had to come back here.”
I leaned forward, afraid I’d miss the response. My ears strained.
“We’ll run a cognition test tomorrow. Sleep now.”
There was the sound of a glass being set on a counter, after a moment, and then a series of others I couldn’t identify as easily. The slide of something opening, the click of a closure, the rustle of paper against paper.
The shadow appeared in the door seconds before the man it belonged to caught up.
I hurried back down a few steps as quietly as possible.
The man walked through the doorway and stood there, at the top of the landing, like he was listening. I couldn’t see his face, not a single detail. I lowered myself to a crouch on one of the wide steps, burrowing into my jacket and staying as deep in the shadows pooled there as possible. My foot thudded softly against the wall, and I held my breath.
Please don’t let the sound carry. Why did I risk this? What was I thinking? How quickly could someone get here? How far am I from the thirty-minute alarm mark? How long will SmallvilleGuy wait before calling the cops?
The man standing framed in the dim doorway began to whistle, and I was convinced he’d spotted me. He’d seen some movement in the dark, or heard the impact of my shoe.
The jaunty serial killer tune kept up, but as he whistled he traipsed down the opposite staircase. In the glimpse I caught before he was out of sight, I could tell he held something under one arm, and he moved swiftly down, not pausing to seek out an intruder. I tracked each dull tap of his shoes on the stairs, and I pretended I was a ghost again, tried to stay that silent, that motionless.
Until I heard the front door open and shut.
I relaxed against the wall, and sank to a seat on the step where I hid.
I needed to get out of there.
But my eyes found the muted glow of the door above. And I was on my feet and moving again, still being careful. The double was here somewhere. He hadn’t left.
I wanted a peek.
One look.
And then I’d leave, text SmallvilleGuy from the cab and let him know I was a-okay except for almost coming face to face with the whistling mad doctor. I’d found him, anyway, Dabney Donovan the whistler, and that meant we could confront him with Melody, make him pony up the treatment for her. Though that would be far riskier than what I was currently doing.
Plenty risky, all on its own.
I climbed up the stairs to the landing, then eased my head a fraction into the doorframe to see what could be seen.
I swallowed.
It was definitely a lab, if one that looked like I’d arrived by way of a time machine, transporting me back to the 1950s or Area 51 or something. The overhead lights were off, but there was enough illumination to reveal rows of file cabinets at one end of a room lined with gleaming black counters, some with paper files on them, others with vaguely scientific-looking equipment like test tubes and tongs and machines with cranks at their sides.
And at the lab’s heart, the source of the light.
It was a large cylindrical tank, glowing softly from within, and filled with some sort of light blue liquid. Thick gray cables ran from it to the wall, and inside it, silhouetted in the blue liquid, and in the glow, was the man who looked like James’s dad.
His eyes were closed, and so I risked going closer. His eyelids fluttered and I froze, but the movement stopped after a few seconds. He returned to serenity, floating there.
The doctor, Dabney Donovan, had told him to sleep, and maybe he did only and exactly what he was told.
Ugh.
My skin crawled with the creepiness of this place, the tank,
the double, the experiment, and what could just as well be called Ismenios’s lair as Ismenios Labs. But creeped out or not, while I was there I wanted to look for evidence.
That was the first priority. Then, no matter how much I dreaded it, I could make a more thorough inspection of the double and that tank. I’d been assuming he was some sort of fake twin, experimented on somehow to look like the ex-mayor. But he could be something else entirely.
Circling, I went to the filing cabinets, snapping a photo of the counters I passed on the way. I found a cabinet labeled S and flipped through folders.
Somnambulism, Sonograms, Sonic Booms, read the labels, in scrawly handwriting. And names too, Smith, Sommer, Sigler…
No Simpson. But what was this? Slender girl, 16, Kate.
So he didn’t even bother with names, sometimes.
Some scientist.
If he described Melody, who knew what words he’d use? There were so many files. Too many to search each one.
Except… hold on.
I took a chance. In a few moments, I located the Ps, pulled the drawer free, and paged through the folders.
Paleobiology, Photoelectrons, Phillips, Psychological Conditioning (that one was disturbingly thick), Porter…
Pretty blond girl, Melody S, 14.
“You sick jerk,” I whispered, shaking my head. “She has a last name.”
I lifted the file out and put it in my bag, then slid that drawer back into place. Wondering if there was anything else here I could use, I went to the Ws on a hunch. I flicked through, faster now, looking for Worthington, James, to see if he had a file for James’s dad.
Nothing there either. But if he liked to file people the way he thought of them…
I went to the Ms. Bingo. Mayor Worthington. The file was thin, but I removed it, slipping it into my bag.
Now it was time to get out of this dodgy lab.
Weaving back through the counters and equipment, I clicked the button on my phone to take photos blindly, hoping I’d get useful shots to show Perry.
I paused. The only thing left was the tank. Should I risk it?
I’d come this far. One slow step and then another toward it, and I lifted the camera.
The body in the tank shifted.
I froze, every muscle at tense attention. My ears roared. I should have left as soon as I had the file.
The man in the tank had a small smile on his face, and I hadn’t realized before that he had his hand in his pocket. He removed it, and gazed down at his fist. His fingers unclenched.
I squinted. He held a small plastic bag, and inside it were—I strained to see—small white shapes.
Pills. It was a small plastic bag filled with pills. He smiled down at them, then replaced the bag in his pocket. His free hand reached to circle the wrist he usually wore the tracker on, the gesture familiar. His eyes drifted shut.
Time for me to get out of there. But I hesitated at the door and turned, raising my phone. I should get one shot of the tank. Maybe someone else could explain what the double was doing in there.
I pressed the button to take the photo, and his eyes popped open. He stared straight at me from the soft glow of the blue liquid.
Whether or not he actually saw me was anyone’s guess. Maybe he was asleep and dreaming. But his eyes stayed open and it felt like he was looking at me. I did what anyone would do if a creepy doppelgänger was staring straight at them from inside his oddity tank.
I ran, hoping he couldn’t set himself free.
CHAPTER 15
I wouldn’t hear if he pursued me or not, not unless he shouted—at least, I didn’t think I would be able to. Not with how my feet pounded down the wood stairs, no effort made to be a quiet ghost anymore, and the way my ears kept roaring in something that might be terror.
But no shadow fell over me. I didn’t see or hear anything except for myself flying down, down, down, my feet thudding on the stairs.
I reached the bottom, vaulted across the lobby to the door, and shoved. The door resisted, as immovable as if I was fighting to shove a hundred-foot-tall wall of ancient stone out of my way. I tried again, pressing hard. It still wouldn’t budge. And the locking mechanism I’d picked on the way in had no visible access point on this side.
“Crap, crappity, crap,” I said quietly, though at this point, who was I kidding? If the double in the tank was aware and not dreaming, then what he was aware of was my presence here. Whether he could follow me or not, he would have seen me, standing in front of his aquatic cage, taking his photograph.
All of which brought up another question I didn’t want to deal with yet, not until I was out of here, safe and sound. But the question came anyway, looming too large to ignore: What was he? Normal men didn’t climb into glowing blue tanks or wear wristband trackers or report back to their mad scientist master in respectful tones.
Not that I’d thought he was normal. I’d thought he could imitate the appearance of others.
But this was different than that. He was something different.
I shivered involuntarily—so yeah, what I felt beneath it all was definitely terror, terror at being trapped in here with whatever-he-was. I forced myself to take a steadying breath, sucking it into my nose slowly, and letting it out the same way.
It helped. Then I considered the door. The immovable-as-an-ancient-wall-of-stone door. It was, after all, the only way I was getting out of here. I switched on my phone’s flashlight app and searched every inch, starting at the top and working my way down. I resisted the urge to rush as best I could. I didn’t want to miss the magic lock-release on this side.
Nothing, nothing, nothing…
Not until I reached the bottom, and there, just above the floor, a small latch protruded that looked almost homemade. It was a brassy gold in color, shaped like a shell.
I bent, held my breath, and turned it. Then I pressed both hands flat against the door.
It swung free. “Turning random knobs for a thousand,” I said, and stood.
The beeping began the moment my left foot crossed the threshold. As I left the building, the beep gave way to a whirring sound that was swallowed by the door closing behind me.
I didn’t turn back. And Taxi Jack, bless him, didn’t wait for me to run across the street. He peeled away from the curb, car rocketing over the twenty feet between us before it jerked to a halt and, out the open passenger window, he barked: “I thought you were done for! Get in!”
“I thought you’d never ask.” I practically dove into the backseat.
He squealed away as soon as my door was shut.
“What happened?” he asked. “There was some weird guy who came out and I thought for sure you were—”
“Shhh—” I said, then softened it to, “just a sec.”
He seemed legitimately concerned about my well-being. That was kind of sweet. I’d assumed our sometime-alliance was purely cash based on his part.
I fumbled out my phone. SmallvilleGuy would be going crazy. So crazy he might have alerted my friends, and the last thing I needed was them showing up here.
I stabbed the spot on my home screen where the chat app waited, but nothing happened. I squinted.
Nothing happened, because the icon was gone.
“What? No no no,” I groaned.
All of my apps were gone.
My contact numbers were gone.
And gone too were the photos I’d taken in the lab upstairs.
Nothing remained in the image library. The only thing left was three bars of cell service.
“That noise.” I punched the seat, stuffing my phone back in my bag.
“You okay, sweetheart?” the cabbie asked, and he slowed a fraction, foot off the gas.
“Don’t slow down. Go. Faster than ever.” I rattled off my parents’ address and looked at the dashboard clock. I had
n’t been in there that long. It just felt like I had.
I was riding the threshold of the half-hour, but surely SmallvilleGuy would grant me a grace period. I didn’t have his cell number, and he didn’t have mine. He’d contact Devin if he couldn’t reach me, most likely. Devin wasn’t prone to overreaction.
I could try to call Devin myself, let him know I was okay. But we weren’t that far from our home sweet brownstone, and traffic was remarkably clear. I could contact everyone from home.
It would all be fine. Tense, but fine. Poor SmallvilleGuy.
I pressed the promised cash—plus a big tip—into Jack’s hand when he pulled up at the curb in front of our apartment.
He said, “Hon, take it from me, you don’t need to be going back to that kind of place again.” He paused. “But if you do, make sure you call your pal. I’ll look out for you.”
With that, he waved me off and eased away from the curb.
“I’m touched,” I told his brake lights.
Then I walked-but-didn’t-run, barely, to the door and inside.
My parents were huddled around the landline phone in the living room, the receiver pressed to my dad’s ear, and my mom sagged in visible relief when she saw me walk through the door. “Oh, thank god! Here she is, she’s okay,” she said.
Dad was in uniform, and not relieved, it seemed. He gripped the receiver tighter and said, “Can I ask again who this is and why you thought Lois was in trouble?”
Oh. My. God. He hadn’t called Devin or the Scoop. He’d called here. My parents.
I crossed the room, knowing my face had gone bright red, and tried to snatch the receiver from my dad. “Please let me have the phone,” I said. “This is my fault.”
Mom gave him a significant look, and his fingers uncurled. But both of them stood there watching me closer than close as I took the receiver and held it up to my ear.
“Lois?” an almost-familiar voice asked. “Is that you? Are you really okay? I know this is against the rules, but I didn’t know what to do.”
