drinking wine.
But the confusion lasted only a moment. It was a long, drawn-out moment, to be sure; the longest of my life. But it would never take longer than that for me to recognize Ben Traina.
“No,” I whispered, as that bell-like laugh drifted up to me again.
The exhalation cost me. Regan whipped around, and I ducked behind the concrete wall, squeezing my eyes shut against the vision of Regan clutching Ben’s arm…and him smiling back down at her.
What was he-? And why-? And how could he-?
But I knew what, and why, and how. Hadn’t he spelled it out to me in our recent night together?
But I had left him, hadn’t I? Left him to wake alone again, with nothing but a note that essentially read,
And now he’d ended up with Regan. Even in my addled state I put it together easily. She had studied me and my past, and had targeted my lover. She was the woman he’d been talking to on the computer. She was Rose.
And she looked familiar, I thought, because she’d altered her appearance to look like me. The Joanna me.
“I’m gonna kill her. I’m gonna fucking…”
I was rising to take aim again, give chase if I had to, when a family of five stepped out of the garage elevator. As I ducked behind a red Buick while they made their way to their car; luggage, two children, and an infant in tow, the interruption gave me a moment to remember why I was there, and forced me to admit I couldn’t do anything about Ben and Regan right now. Not with Hunter counting on me, and the entire valley’s survival at stake.
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
“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
“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
