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CHAPTER TEN

Even after the siren ended, I couldn’t hear anything. My heart was beating so fast that all the blood rushed in my ears. Nikolai knew. He knew I was an imposter. I didn’t know what he suspected, probably not the truth, as it was such a weird and unlikely thing, but he knew something was up. And that meant I was in danger.

When I looked up at him, he was watching me with his eyes narrowed, obviously trying to gauge my reaction. I wondered how much I’d given away.

The siren was obviously meant to signal the start of whatever was about to happen. The dots on the screens, the test subjects, started to move. I watched as they entered the forest, running in different directions. I wondered if they knew what was happening or if they just thought it was a chance to escape. Silently, I urged them on, wanting them to move faster, beyond the borders of the screens I was watching, beyond the borders of this forest. I wanted them to break free before those tests could begin.

I had no clue what would happen next, or how not-dad would test all the awful things in that folder. But it didn’t take me long to find out.

First a blanket of water dropped from the sky. Not like rain, but more like a giant bucket being tipped out, so big that it covered the entire area. Luckily for us, the little platform was covered, because after a moment I heard screams, and a few of the heat signatures blinked out. Nikolai made some notes in the folder.

Without thinking, I jumped up from my seat and scanned the screens to make sure that the possible Sams were still there. I remembered the test subject numbers, 322 to the north, 592 and 721 to the southwest. I breathed out a sigh of relief and sank back into my seat when I noticed they were still there. But that was just the first test, there were still hours to go. How long had Sam even been out here? How often did they do these tests? How did any of them ever survive? I couldn’t think about that or I’d start to panic and then I’d be good for nothing.

It went on like that for the next ten minutes. There would be a few minutes break, then something was released, a few of the subjects would blink out and Nikolai would make notes. After the third time, I couldn’t stand it any more. I couldn’t keep sitting there. They were people, not just lights on a screen, I had to do something to help.

I stood, but Nikolai caught me by the wrist.

“What do you think you can do?” he said quietly, still looking down at the paper he was making notes on. He scribbled something furiously and I looked at what he was writing.

“DON’T LET HIM KNOW WHAT YOU ARE”

“What?” I said, stupidly.

He kept writing. “WHATEVER YOU ARE. HE WILL HURT YOU.”

“I know,” I said. “I don’t care.”

But as the siren sounded again for another test, I slumped back into my chair. I couldn’t help Sam if my own light blinked out. I needed to be smart about this.

“Okay,” I said, when the next test was over and the possible Sams were still okay. I had to think. There was one advantage I had over this not-dad. He didn’t know me. He didn’t know what I was good at. And I was good at tech. Maybe I hadn’t been so focused on it recently, on account of all the crazy magic stuff, but I’d done some tinkering over the summer, out of boredom, some light hacking. I still knew my way around, enough to get those cameras offline at least, and then I could have a conversation with Nikolai and find out what he knew. Since my cover was blown anyway, all bets were off.

I pushed my chair over to the closest keyboard and started typing.

“What are you doing?” Nikolai hissed at me, but I ignored him. I needed to concentrate. I was reasonably sure the systems would work the same in this universe but I had to be super focused in case they didn’t. I only had one chance at this, as soon as not-dad realized what I was doing, he’d be all over us.

It took me longer than I’d have liked, but before the next test started, I had all the cameras offline and was halfway to disabling the rest of the tests. I was almost done when Nikolai started pulling me away from the keyboard.

“We have to get out of here,” he said.

With my attention pulled away from the screen, I could hear something, a high whining. Engines, I realized. I swore.

“I just need a second,” I said, shrugging him off.

By the time I finished typing the string of code that would corrupt not-dad’s system enough to stop the testing, Nikolai was halfway down the ladder.

“Come on,” I said, jumping down the last few rungs. “This way.”

I figured our best bet was the south-west potential-Sams. Since there were two of them, there was twice as much chance that one was the Sam I was looking for.

The forest floor was muddy from all the toxic acid that had been dumped during the tests, and the air was hard to breathe. The engines whined even louder but I doubted they could track us through the thick trees, not now that I’d disabled more of their scanning equipment.

“You’re going to get us killed.” Nikolai was right behind me. I thought maybe he’d struggle to keep up but he was fine so far.

It was impossible to know if I was keeping to the right direction, or even if the potential-Sams were in the same place, but either way, I had to keep going until I found them. There were only eight of the test subjects left, and I’d get them all out if I could, but my main priority was Sam.

It became impossible to run. The forest was so thick and the ground so uneven that it was too dangerous, and actually faster to go at a slower but steadier pace. The sound of the engines grew more distant, and as we thrashed our way through, Nikolai decided it was safe enough to talk.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

I decided to play dumb. “You know who I am,” I said.

He snorted. “I knew from the start something was off but at first I thought maybe Lucy was just…” He trailed off.

“Just what?” I asked.

He shook his head. “But you’re not her.” It wasn’t a question. “You’re nothing like her. So, what are you? A spy? One of her father’s creations?”

I sighed. “If I tell you, will you answer some of my questions?”

He rolled his eyes. “Obviously that depends on who you are.”

That seemed fair. Maybe I shouldn’t have trusted him. He was Nikolai. But he was Nikolai. Even if he wasn’t the Nikolai from my world, he was so alike that I couldn’t help but think of him as pack. So, I told him the truth.

“I’m Lucy from a parallel world.”

I didn’t expect him to believe me, but he just shrugged. “Seems legit,” he said. “Explains a lot, actually.”

“So now it’s your turn,” I said. “What were you planning to do to take down evil Dad?”

“Taser,” he said simply.

I snorted. “You’re kidding.”

“What?” he said. “You were going to taser him. He electrocuted himself a few weeks ago and was out for a few minutes, that’s what gave us the idea. He’s so heavily protected, it was the first weakness we could find. We were going to tase him then tie him up, change all the access codes and then lock him in his own dungeons.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You really think that would have worked? Hasn’t he been siphoning off the power from all the people he’s been torturing? You really think you can just shock him and take over his evil empire? That is literally the worst plan I’ve ever heard and I have heard some terrible plans in my time.”

“ Please tell me I’m not dating you in this other universe,” he said.

I snorted.

“Good,” he said. “So, what are you even trying to do here?”

I hesitated. There was no way he’d told me the whole story about their lame plan, so I wasn’t going to give away everything either. I told him about Sam, about how he’d fallen into this world and I was here trying to save him. Nikolai nodded thoughtfully, then tripped over a tree root.

“Yeah, I remember them talking about that guy. But he’d not out here today, he’s still in the cells.”

My heart sank. “The cells?” I asked. “They’re back in there?” I hooked a thumb back over my shoulder, though I had no idea what direction not-dad’s evil compound was in.

Nikolai nodded. “Yeah. There’s probably some other places too, but the main dungeons are here.”

Before I could even swear again, something came at me from the side and knocked me into a tree. I jumped back to my feet to see Nikolai using a fallen branch to fend off a feral, snarling werewolf.

I grabbed the werewolf and pulled it away from Nikolai and it spun to face me.

I froze. Even half-transformed and crazed, I knew that face.

Tennyson.

He pounced at me. I fell backward and my head slammed against a rock. The last thing I saw before I blacked out was Tennyson’s face, launching toward me.