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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Rather than drop like a lead weight and splatter on the ground, I floated. It was as if my body realized it didn’t actually exist in this world and decided to behave accordingly. I still fell, but it was more like falling through water than air. As I fell, I closed my eyes. It was the same as when I walked through the walls – there was no real reason to close my eyes, but it made it easier to suspend my disbelief if I couldn’t see what was happening. I knew that when I landed, wherever that may be, would be where I could access the lodestone, but it felt as if there was an element of belief to what was happening, as if I had to somehow know I could do this in order to be able to. And it was far easier to believe something impossible if you didn’t have to see it.

When I hit the ground, it was quite gentle and I was standing upright, as if I’d merely jumped from the bottom rung of the ladder. I clearly hadn’t, because I was in a different room entirely. At a guess, I’d say it was a room somewhere below the dungeons, and I’d fallen directly down, through the floor to it, though really I could’ve been anywhere. It was a dark room, lined with shelves that were stacked with bottles and jars, almost like some old lady’s pickle cellar. I couldn’t tell where the light was coming from, but it was that same sickly green light that had been in the dungeons, which made the glass from the jars glow eerily.

I wasn’t sure if the lodestone was in that exact room but the dripping was so loud now it wasn’t a distinct sound, more like just a high-pitched humming that did no favors to my badly battered head. I knew the only way to stop the sound was to find the lodestone, so I couldn’t avoid it, I had to follow the noise to wherever it was the loudest.

The shelves were stacked haphazardly, and from floor to ceiling, so trying to navigate around them was like trying to find the center of a very creepy maze.

I didn’t look too closely at the jars, afraid of what I might see. The whole place had the vibe of a mad scientist lab, so the pickle jars were probably full of misshapen body parts or something, and I didn’t even want to think about it. I just had to get the lodestone and get out of there.

Which was easier said than done. The storeroom seemed to go on forever. Every time I felt as though I was getting closer, I’d hit a dead end. Sure, I could probably walk through the shelves, just as easily as walking through a wall, but the thought of what might be in the jars, of what I might be walking through stopped me.

Eventually the noise got so loud, I thought I might go mad. I couldn’t even cover my ears, because the sound came from inside my head. It almost seemed as if it would be worth it to knock myself out just to get away from the sound, but just as I was seriously thinking about it, I stumbled onto the lodestone.

Literally. It was sticking up out of the ground. Which, if they were trying to hide it, was kind of stupid, and if they weren’t, was still a definite occupational health and safety issue.

I stared down at it. It was a fairly normal-looking stone, around the size of my fist, and it looked to be well lodged into the ground. It was almost as if the floor had been built around it, rather than the stone set into the floor, but that couldn’t be possible. The stone had been stolen from Vucari’s people, he’d said. Who’d go to all that trouble just to leave it wedged into the floor of some creepyass basement.

I sighed. I hadn’t brought a pickaxe along, or anything useful in disembedding a rock from a floor, but when I bent down to touch the stone, it came away quite easily. I picked it up and put it in my pocket.

As I turned to leave, something moved behind me. I blinked and shook my head, thinking it was just a mirror but then I realized it was a person. A person who looked exactly like me. I hadn’t heard her because the stone had been so noisy but she must have been following me through the room. I wasn’t sure why she hadn’t spoken up sooner and I didn’t get a chance to ask, because she picked up one of the gross jars and whacked me over the head with it.

I groaned and sat up, back in the real world. The jar must have shattered because my face and arms were covered in cuts, and I could feel a painful lump forming on my head.

“Honestly,” I said. “There’s no way I’m getting out of this without a brain injury.”

I looked around, and realized I wasn’t back in my world after all. I was in one of the cells in my not-dad’s dungeon. Not one of the cells like Sam had been in though, this was a room for experimenting. It wasn’t big and fancy like the room with the viewing platform, it was more like where my real dad had performed his earlier experiments on me. The equipment seemed rudimentary and none too clean, with only enough room for one test subject.

And that’s what I was. I wasn’t exactly strapped to a table, but my ankles were shackled and chained to the bench I sat on.

“So,” I said. “This is… not wholly unexpected.”

Other-me glanced over from where she was filling a syringe with something green and sludgy.

“I’m not going to monologue all my plans to you, if that’s what you’re hoping,” she said, setting the syringe aside and putting the lid back on the jar of green and sludgy stuff.

I shrugged. “Whatever. You know I can walk through walls, right? Do you really think these shackles are going to keep me here while you, what, drain me of my powers?”

Her face ticked. That was what she had planned then.

“That’s what your father’s doing, right? Draining all these people of their powers, maybe trying to transplant some of them? How many has he stolen for himself? How many lives has he stolen to power his ambitions?”

She raised her eyebrows and flicked off her rubber gloves. “Is that what your father is doing, in your world?” She stopped to consider for a moment. “Is that actually possible?”

I shrugged, not wanting to give her, or her evil father ideas.

“I realized something earlier today,” she said, resting back against the workbench. “When I intercepted your psychic communication with that werewolf. You see, I’d thought we merely looked the same, an accident of genetics that led to us having the same ancestry in a different world, but when I could hear his thoughts meant for you, and I noticed that his counterpart could hear your thoughts for him, I realized I was wrong. There’s some sort of connection between us, between each of the counterparts, I’d hazard. Which gives me an advantage that my father lacks in his work. A direct link between myself and my subject.”

She turned her back and began messing with something on the workbench. While she was distracted, I tried to spirit my way out of the shackles but it was much harder than just brain-walking through a wall. Maybe because it was a smaller target? Maybe I needed to concentrate more?

“I never believed in a soul before, or spirit, anything like that,” she said. “So, you can imagine my ontological shock when I realized I was wrong. There was no other logical explanation for that connection, not that my work hasn’t already disproven. I was completely thrown at the idea, but I think I’ve done well with only these few hours to plan.” She glanced back over her shoulder at me. “Those shackles have wards to inhibit your powers. This isn’t my first rodeo, you know.”

I raised my eyebrows. Just because she said so, didn’t mean I had to believe her. And I had other powers that she didn’t know about. Heck, I had powers I didn’t even know about. Powers that could knock her socks off, hopefully literally.

I’m in a bit of a pickle , I said to Tennyson. To both Tennysons, if they could hear me. Don’t respond, but Other-me has me prisoner, and is about to start experimenting on me. We’re in some sort of lab, I think under the dungeons but I’m not sure. Don’t come for me unless everyone else is safe, I can handle her.

Probably. I could probably handle her.

“And so what,” I said to her, figuring if I kept her distracted long enough, she wouldn’t get around to injecting me with that swamp sludge. “You’ve discovered the human soul and now you plan to steal mine?”

She scoffed. “What would I want with that?”

She was infuriatingly hard to bait. Sure, she was talking but she wasn’t saying anything useful.

“I don’t get it,” I said.

She snorted. “What a surprise.”

I really wanted to do violence to her, but that wouldn’t help me in the big picture. I had to keep on task. All I had to do was get away from her, then get back to the portal. I had the lodestone; I’d done everything I came here to do. Assuming the others had got Sam there safely, we could just step through to the real world and close the door to this world back up and never have to deal with it again.

I kicked at the shackles, testing their strength. Rather than spiriting out of them, it might be easier to break them, or break the bench I was chained to.

“Settle down,” she said. “Even if you do get free of me, you’ll never escape. There’s no way back to your world. That door you opened; it’s gone. That was the first thing I did when I realized what our connection meant. I don’t know how long it will take to complete my work, but obviously I need you here to do that. Didn’t you realize after I knocked you out but you stayed right here?”

I bit back a swear. “If you hurt any of my friends, I will kill you.”

She laughed. “Of course not. They’re valuable assets. I don’t want to risk harming the connection between us, I’ll need to test the boundaries of it on them first. But I think we’ll be safe enough for today’s preliminary experiments.” She made some notes in a folder then turned back to me. “Should we begin?”

“I’d really rather not,” I told her. “Let’s go back to what you were saying about my friends. Tell me more about that. Starting with where you’re keeping them.”

She smiled sarcastically. “Funny.” She picked something up from her workbench. “Hold still. I don’t want to damage you more than necessary but I will use maximum force if you make this difficult.”

“Fine,” I said. I fully intended to make it as difficult as possible. I waited for her to get closer, then struck out.

It was obviously what she’d been expecting me to do, and she quickly jabbed me in the ribs with the thing in her hand. Her taser. Of course. It gave me a sharp electric shock, strong enough to incapacitate me for a moment. While I was unable to move, she strapped a leather band around my head and another around my throat. There were wires coming out of them, which were connected to the laptop on her desk.

When I could move again, I began thrashing around, trying to rip the band off my head. She turned back to her workbench and typed something on her laptop. Within seconds, I began to feel weak.

She turned back to me with a clipboard and pen in hand, furiously writing notes.

I was too weak to fight anymore. I was too weak to speak. I slumped over on the bench, barely able to keep my eyes open. She wasn’t just stealing my soul or my powers, she was stealing all of it. Within moments, I was just a shell, unable to think, barely able to breathe.

Then she turned back to her desk and hit a few keys, turning it off. Whatever it was.

“That’s enough for the first session,” she said.

I could breathe again, but that was about the extent of it. Other-me seemed to be phasing in and out, but I couldn’t tell if that was because my brain wasn’t working or because of something she’d done. But then she turned around and walked directly through the wall behind her.

She’d taken my powers. She’d taken everything.