The Rising(83)
Raiff took a deep breath and framed Alex in his stare, seeming to forget Sam was even there. “I reacquired you shortly after—it wasn’t hard once I had a list of facility personnel and connected the dots after learning about your mother. I counted my blessings, knowing this was the perfect scenario to keep you safe, better than any I could possibly have planned. But I never lost track of you and enlisted other refugees from our planet to serve as Watchers, keeping an eye on you as much as possible, Dancer—”
“Alex. Please call me Alex.”
“Alex,” Raiff tried. “We never let you out of our sight, knowing this day would come. Knowing the future depended on it.”
“Refugees?” Sam posed.
“I’m getting to that. Suffice it to say for now that we knew what those who control our planet were going to do to you because they’d already done it to us.”
“Get back to what you said about what I know,” Alex prompted. “About how to defeat whoever killed my parents.”
But before Raiff could, a bell began to jangle.
*
“My early detection system,” he said, leading them through the sprawl of what felt like a grand loft-style apartment, albeit one that came without windows.
“What,” Alex began, “a bunch of tin cans tied on a string?”
“The bells are just the sound I programmed. The system itself is a bit more sophisticated.”
The jangling sounded again.
“We need to get out of here,” Raiff said, leading them straight toward a wall paneled in rich, dark wood.
Some sort of sensor must have picked him up because the wall slid open. They continued on through it, finding themselves in another cavernous space, blackout dark until Raiff flipped a switch somewhere.
Sam screamed.
*
It was a dragon. Red and real and fiery with flames shooting out its mouth. As Alex clutched her, she realized it wasn’t moving and smelled vaguely of sawdust—and that the flames weren’t at all real, but carved out of wood as well.
“Sorry about that,” said Raiff. “I should have warned you.”
Sam nodded, sucking in big deep breaths to settle herself. Here she was, eighteen years old, and she’d just been scared out of her wits by a wooden dragon perched atop a carousel—called Dragon Wheel, according to the sign she could just glimpse upon a flag-topped cover—and featuring all manner of comparable creatures.
These days, though, who could tell what was real and what wasn’t?
Laboratory Z, Sam now remembered the professor had mentioned outside, had been built on the ruins of an old amusement park in the time before Bishop Ranch. Hence the Dragon Wheel and another dozen vintage carousels battling for space, each looking freshly carved and painted.
“Hobby of mine,” Raiff explained briefly. “I restore them to working order. Come on, we need to hurry.”
But before leading them on, Raiff threw a long series of switches that looked like circuit breakers. Instantly the restored carousels whirled into motion, their horses, dragons, and assorted other creatures bobbing up and down with a chorus of instrumentals dueling to be the loudest and most annoying.
“If it’s androids that are coming,” Raiff said, “this will throw off their tracking. If it’s Trackers, it’ll provide cover.”
And with that gunshots rang out, echoing amid the spinning thunder of wooden creatures gaining speed with each twirl of their respective circular homes. Raiff pushed Alex and Sam down low, even with the carousel bases, making them almost impossible to spot, as the hundreds of beautifully restored empty mounts sprang back to life.
More shots resounded as Raiff pulled them on.
“Stay low!” he ordered. “See the carousel way off to the right?”
“Painted Ponies?” Alex asked.
“No, the White Castle. There’s a door just beyond it. That’s our target, an extension of the original escape tunnel. Hope you’re not afraid of the dark.”
And with a pistol that had suddenly appeared in his grasp, Raiff fired two shots at the bank of switches he’d flipped moments before. Sparks fizzled on the first shot, and on the second the lights in his carousel house died altogether. It was pitch black now except for the eyes of the hundreds of bobbing creatures, all of which were luminescent, providing plenty of light for someone already familiar with the cluttered terrain.
Raiff stuffed his gun back in his belt and led them on through the maze-like confines. Dipping and darting, twisting and turning, and never letting go of either Alex or Sam, as if the three of them were dancing together through the glowing eyes that looked like monsters ready to swallow them.
But these weren’t the real monsters, Sam reminded herself. The real monsters were already here, with more on the way.
Raiff found the door, shouldered it ajar, and they slid through as it sealed as quickly as it had opened. They found themselves dashing down a long winding hall that seemed identical in every way to the one that had brought Alex and Sam to Raiff’s lair.
“As for where we go from here—” he started, when they reached a ladder at the end leading up to a hatch.
“I already know where we go from here,” Sam said, between pounding breaths, before he could finish. “The professor pretty much told me.”
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