A Drop of Night(23)

Lilly’s standing, craning her neck to get a view of the watch, still bawling.

Will shows her. A second later he switches off the screen. “The battery’s solar-powered,” he says quietly. “It’s going to die soon.”

I have the urge to scream Just like usssss! while spinning maniacally over the marble.

Instead I mumble: “I don’t get it. They didn’t have to do all this. They could have just dragged us off a street somewhere, or hacked us up in a parking garage—”

Will doesn’t answer. Something else does. Somewhere in that huge, unbroken silence, something is creeping over the floor toward us, skittering like an animal. Lilly breaks out in a fresh, high-pitched sob.

Images rush into my mind: huge, muscled zombies dragging rusted chains. Carnivorous plants. Shape-shifting insects. Every cliché I’ve ever seen on one of my late-night movie-watching binges. Please don’t let there be carnivorous plants down here. Please don’t do that to us.

Click.

The skittering breaks off. A red pinpoint of light pops up about thirty feet down the hall, glimmering.

I stare at it, holding my breath.

The light’s in the wall. A panel snapped back, and now a square of embedded machinery is exposed, coils of gray metal tubes and that red lens, staring out like an eye.

“Sealed for two hundred years?” Jules breathes. “Really?”

To the right, I hear a second click.

I jerk around, staring through the dark. Another red light has popped up on the opposite wall. A steady, round glow. And now the red light buzzes out of it, slicing across the hallway in a pure, thin cut, as if someone slit open the darkness. A hologram springs up in the center of the hall. We gape at it, huddling together on the floor.

“Children.”

It’s Dorf. The hologram isn’t detailed, no eyes or nose discernible, but I recognize the sloping shoulders, the hugeness. “Reopen the blast door.” His voice is low and quick and utterly clinical. “This is for your own safety. Reopen the blast door and let in the security team—”

The hologram casts a grainy, fuzzy red light over our faces.

“Can you hear me?” Dorf says. “We have a visual on you. Open the door and let in our security team. I cannot guarantee your well-being otherwise.”

“Our well-being?” I almost choke on my own sarcasm. “If you were concerned for our well-being maybe you shouldn’t have murdered Hayden, how’s that for an idea?”

“Anouk,” he says. He can hear us. He pauses. Turns, maybe to someone else in the room he’s in. “Listen to me,” he says, in that same cold, urgent voice. “This should not have occurred. It is vital that you follow my instructions exactly. Turn around. Return to the blast door. Unbar it as quickly as you can. If you do not open that door, you will die. There is nothing we will be able to do to help you. You’re being clever now, thinking, ‘Well, I’ll die either way,’ but believe me, there are ways to die so terrible you cannot possibly comprehend them.”

“Yeah?” I say, and I feel a hysterical thrill rising in me, making me brave and giddy. “Well, we’re not opening that door.”

The hologram seems to stiffen, darken. “Anouk, this is not a game. You have not locked us out; you have locked yourselves in. You have approximately three minutes to live—”

“And if we let you in, we have one,” I say.

“What happens in three minutes?” Jules whispers. “What are they going to do to us?”

“He’s bluffing,” I say, like I have a clue.

“Children, open the door.” Dorf’s voice is tense now, his control slipping.

I start walking toward the red eye in the wall. Wrap my fingers around the key-chain light, locking it behind my knuckles. I reach the panel. Above the red light is a camera lens.

“Come and get me,” I say under my breath. Grit my teeth and smash my fist into the tech panel. Glass crunches. It hurts, but I don’t bleed. The hologram flickers out.

Everyone’s on their feet now. I hurry back to them. We have about five seconds of silence, and now two more panels slide open further down the hall. Two new lights blink on. The red lines collide. Dorf springs up a second time.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Dorf says, and the cool sheen in his voice is completely shot. He sounds nervous. “A team of trackers is being dispatched from the other end of the palace. They are three miles away at present. Wait for them to arrive and do not, I repeat, do not, go further into the hall.”

“Trackers?” Lilly asks, her eyes wide, the whites huge in the darkness. “What are trackers? What do you want from us?!” She shrieks it, and she sounds animal, jagged and raw throated. There’s something in her hand—a pointless, useless bracelet. She hurls it at the hologram. It passes through with barely a blip and skitters away over the marble.

Jules is starting to fidget, and now he runs straight for the hologram, all skinny legs and rage, like he’s going to tackle it. He tumbles through, twists, falls on his back.

“Stop moving!” Dorf shouts. “Do not move! Someone open that damned door!”

I race toward the next red eye, my fist raised. Will is going for the one on the other side of the hall. We smash into them at almost the same time. The hologram blinks out a second time. But Dorf’s voice keeps coming, echoing through the hall–open-the-open-the-door-don’t-DON’T-MOVE—