Flux (13 page)

The room was well lit. Cupboards and medical equipment lined the walls, and a large computer dominated the far end, but what drew Nellie’s attention was a line of cubicles that ran through the center of the room. Covered by a plastic dome, each cubicle was the length and breadth of an average adult body. Nellie’s breath caught in her throat and she froze. Everything about the room—its whiteness, the quietly beeping machines, the cubicles’ sleepy blinking
lights—was familiar. The gate she’d woken to see hovering midair in the shack seemed to have opened directly into one of her memories. Without approaching the cubicles, she knew what she would find lying inside. The question pounding the blood through her veins was not what, but whom? Would it be a stranger or one of her own doubles, her head cut open and wires running directly into her brain?

Entering the room, Nellie approached the nearest cubicle. From the doorway the dome had been opaque, but as she leaned over the lid, it became transparent, revealing the child that lay within. Eyes closed, she was about four years old. Her chest rose and fell in a regular sleeping rhythm and she was naked, wearing only a helmet. When Nellie saw the nightmare tangle of wires and tubes that ran in and out of various places in the girl’s skin, she bent double and rode out a rush of hot and cold. As it faded, she found her body pivoting toward the room’s open door.
Run, run
, her legs screamed, but she forced herself to move toward the next cubicle and the next, studying the face of the child in each one. Even if she hadn’t yet come across one of her own doubles, there had to be a reason the Goddess had brought her here. She could leave now and never understand, or she could move on to the next cubicle in the hope of discovering the meaning of this place.

The boy she found there looked so like Deller that, except for the slant to his eyes, he could have been his twin. Like the other children she’d seen, a helmet rode his head, and a shock of wires ran in and out of small openings in his skin. Shyly her eyes flicked across his naked penis and the wires that were taped even there. Above his head, a small green light pulsed in the rhythm of his heartbeat. Urgently Nellie pressed against the cubicle, her hands scrabbling across the surface. If she could get it open, she could wake the boy and take him back to Deller. But there didn’t seem to be any buttons or levers. The cubicle felt completely smooth.

Inside the cubicle, the boy’s eyes opened. Slanted and weasely, they stared up at her. Above his head the light flashed more quickly
as he started to speak. Pressed against the cubicle, Nellie moaned in frustration. Nothing could be heard through the dome, and the dark-colored plastic made it difficult to see the boy’s lips clearly.

In the distance an alarm went off, and footsteps could be heard running down the hall. With a gasp, Nellie pushed off the cubicle and dashed through the open doorway. To her left, she could see several lab-coated figures coming toward her. A shout went up as she turned to the right and took off. The gate was still there—she could see a hairline crack superimposed over the wall at the hall’s far end. Would it open for her, or was this some kind of a set-up, a grim inter-level joke?

The gate opened before she reached it. Throwing herself through the gap, she felt it vanish before she landed and turned back to the place it had been, midair in the shack’s early morning gloom.

Chapter 9

S
HE HEADED DIRECTLY INTO
the pre-dawn gloom to find Deller, pausing only to pack the blue-robed statue of the Goddess into her knapsack. Outside, the early morning air breathed in sleepy gusts and the sky drowsed, sluggish and heavy-lidded, above the trees. Just over the horizon hovered two ghostly smudges, the twin moons. Nellie trudged quickly toward them, passing bushes that hunched deep in shadow and the occasional wickawoo’s waking cheep. Wet grass flicked her bare legs, and she brushed furiously at insects hitching a ride on her arms, trying to ignore the strange trembling that kept sweeping her body.

It was just that it was too big, the whole thing gone wild-crazy, over the edge, and she no longer knew how to fit everything into a recognizable pattern. Before last night, she’d never thought much about the relationship between the levels. She’d traveled enough to know they weren’t stacked next to each other like a deck of cards, and she couldn’t expect to find them organized spatially like doors in a hallway. Levels were more like notes in a song, she’d eventually decided, as long as you understood that when flux was active both the singer and the song could change with each note. But until last night, those notes had all been reasonably familiar, even when flux
was playing its tricks. Sure, she had to keep on her toes for small changes, like a double with a knife, but no mysterious gate had ever appeared out of thin air and opened onto a room of children with wires running into their bodies,
white rooms filled with children being held hostage for experiments ...

The strange trembling swept her again and Nellie bent over, gagging until her body gave up trying to eject the nothingness of an empty stomach. Straightening, she wiped her mouth and leaned shakily against a doogden tree. She was cold, her skin rippling with goosebumps. Why had that gate appeared to her? Had Ivana sent it, or was it simply one of those flukes that happened during the month of Lulunar? She’d only been traveling for seven months, and so had no previous experience with the month of the twins and the chaos it could spawn among the levels. A year ago she hadn’t even believed the levels existed, dismissing them as erva-spawned conjecture and fantasy.

Tightening her knapsack straps, she trudged on toward Dorniver. This early, traffic was infrequent and she felt safe sticking to the main road. A dog barked from a nearby shack, running the full length of its chain, and she glanced speculatively at the next few houses she passed. They seemed quiet, their curtains drawn, with no dogs prowling the yard. Hunger bellowed in her gut and she paused, pondering a raid on a backyard garden, but the rattling of an unseen dog chain convinced her otherwise. Tightening her stomach, she slapped it a few times to quell its queasy growl, then broke into a trot that soon brought the city into view, stroked with the easy pastel light of dawn.

She didn’t know where Deller lived, if he had a family, or if he fended for himself in the streets. There was little chance he attended school and he could be anywhere in the city, running with the Skulls or trying to sniff out his brother’s dead-cold trail. If only, Nellie thought, cursing her stupidity, she’d thought to ask his last name.

Heading toward the river, she soon found the deserted warehouse that housed the Skulls’ headquarters. Located in an area that had
been slotted for demolition, the warehouse squatted on a long street of ramshackle buildings. A few doors down a small factory seemed to be in operation, but the buildings to either side were obviously empty, their windows smashed and graffiti festooning their walls. The warehouse had several entrances, but Nellie remembered exiting through an alcove on the west side, next to a lopsided black skull that had been spray-painted on the wall. Approaching the building, she found the skull leering ominously in the gloom. The small entranceway was in shadow, but she immediately spotted a large padlock hanging above the doorknob. With a groan she slumped against the wall and took a disgusted swing at the lock. Creaking, it gave. So the padlock was a disguise, just like most of the Skulls’ blustering.

Tentatively she removed the padlock and pushed open the door. Warnings tiptoed along her skin and breathed down the back of her neck. Careful, she had to be
careful
. No one could catch her inside this place, not even Deller. Her plan was to locate a suitable hiding spot nearby, head Deller off when she saw him coming, and tell him about his brother. And then? Nellie shrugged off the thought. Then she would be alone with what she’d seen, and so would he.

But first she had to see this place on her own terms and beat the ugly hold it had on her thoughts. Peering through the open doorway, she scanned the small shadowy room with its sagging table and three-legged chairs. Cobwebs draped everywhere, and a scurry of mice and spiders greeted her entrance. The place had probably been a lunchroom once, or some kind of an office. Cupboards lined one wall, and a dusty sink stood under the cardboard-covered window. On the table splayed several magazines, some half-eaten doughnuts, and a jelly sandwich minus a large bite. Without hesitation Nellie wolfed the food, then chugged the remains of a bottle of nevva juice. Gradually the roar in her stomach abated, her shivering stopped, and the steady kick of fear at the base of her brain let up. Slumping to the floor, she wrapped her arms around her knees and
stared dully at the sliver of light cutting through the two pieces of cardboard taped over the window.

So the sun was up and another day had officially begun. What would tonight bring, what was she going to do when the sun went down and the twin moons took over the sky? She couldn’t go back to the shack, not after her experience with the strange new gate. If it had opened there once it could open again, and who knew what other gates it might attract? Only an utter madman would continue living in such a place. And, Nellie thought, fighting off a yawn, there was always the chance the thief who’d stolen her remembering dress and money would return, intending to take up permanent residence.

She snapped out of a murky doze to hear footsteps approaching the door. Scrambling to her feet, she scanned frantically for a hiding place. The bathroom was the obvious option, but any advantage she might gain there was lost to the open outer door—a dead giveaway to her presence. Backed against the wall, she watched a shadow ooze across the entrance. A shoulder edged the doorjamb and feet shuffled nervously.

“What d’you want?” she yelled, hurling her terror at the door in loud angry sound.

A thin face topped in a tangle of black hair peeked around the doorjamb, and Snakebite began an agitated dance in and out of the entrance. “What d’
you
want?” he whined, openmouthed.

“I want Deller!” Nellie bellowed. “Get him now, or I’ll blow the whole street with my brains. Like this.” With a crazy-man leer, she leaned forward and snapped her fingers.

Instantly Snakebite withdrew, and she listened to the thud of his feet racing down the sidewalk. Edging to the doorway, she peered into the street. It appeared deserted, with only Snakebite’s rapidly retreating butt in sight. Who knew if he actually intended to carry out her order, but regardless, she wasn’t fool enough to get caught in the same trap twice. Scouting out the back of the building, she found the rusty frame of an old truck parked against the wall. A
grunting jump took her from the top of the cab onto the warehouse roof. From here she had a clear view of the city rooftops and the brass hands that crowned every church spire, reaching toward the heavens. Quickly she sent a prayer toward them, her heart beating like wickawoo’s wings. Then she squatted in the shadow of a heating vent, fixed her eyes in the direction Snakebite had taken, and waited.

It was mid-morning before she saw Deller, several of the Skulls in his wake as he came striding down the street toward the warehouse. Two paces ahead, Snakebite flickered like a nervous insect across his path, running backward and talking in an eager high-pitched voice. Hunched behind the heating vent, Nellie observed the approaching group through narrowed eyes. Now that she was consciously studying them, it was obvious none of them lived wild, fending for themselves in the streets. Each was too well dressed, his hair recently washed. Even at this distance she could smell the scent of shampoo and laundry soap pouring off them. It was the smell of a mother, and the thought sent an electric knife singing through Nellie’s heart. All of the boys coming toward her saw the sun rise and set in a mother’s face every day, and didn’t even notice it.

Pullo was the tallest and probably the strongest, but even at a distance, Deller’s command of the group was evident, his head turning to one boy then another as they clamored for his attention. Coming to a halt outside the warehouse, he nodded tersely to one of Pullo’s remarks, then cut off Snakebite’s yapping with a wave of his good hand. Overnight he’d discarded the tensor bandage from his other hand, and the absence of his third finger was marked by a beige bandage that curved over the stump.

“I wanna touch her scars.” Snakebite danced about, babbling eagerly. “Let’s get her down and touch her scars.”

“Go get her then,” Deller said, his face expressionless. “I’ll wait here and see if she blows your brains out.”

“She wouldn’t.” Pullo scratched nervously at his neck. “Not if she sent Snakebite to fetch you.”

Deller shrugged, then watched the rest of the group sidle into the entrance. Fierce whispering drifted out of the alcove. “You go first. No, you.” A tiny grin played across Deller’s lips as the Skulls finally stumbled, a congealed mass of arms and legs, into their headquarters. Silence descended onto the street, the overheated air shimmering like a raw nerve. Nellie shifted, her butt cooking on the warehouse roof. Hooding his eyes with his good hand, Deller turned to scan the rooftops. His gaze paused on the heating vent and he came quickly toward it, stopping directly opposite.

“Bunny?” he called softly, his voice carrying clearly in the stillness of the street.

Slowly she crawled out from behind the vent and sat looking down at him. “How’d you guess?” she asked finally.

“Not dumb enough to wait inside, are you?” he shrugged.

The warehouse roof reverberated slightly as Snakebite came ricocheting through the entrance, bumping into the doorjamb. “She’s not here!” he shouted, rubbing his shoulder. “She took off.”

“Did you check the can?” asked Deller. “

Yeah,” grimaced Snakebite.

“Check again,” said Deller, “you might’ve missed her,” and the other boy darted back inside. A butterfly fluttered around Deller’s head, then landed on his wrist. He cupped it with his hand.

“I saw your brother,” Nellie said, her heart suddenly pounding. “Last night.” She watched Deller’s head snap up, the sunlight smashing against his face, splintering like glass. Slowly his hand lifted, releasing the butterfly. “Come up and I’ll tell you,” she croaked, hugging herself and rocking. “There’s a truck out back.”