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Part 5-9: Sink
Another vehicle tested its braking power out front. Jimena’s group seemed to be waiting for something, but I didn’t stick around to see what. I flashed up to the fifth floor.
“Persi! Do you have your headset on?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. I heard the resounding clomping of her footsteps as she ascended.
“Move quiet, we’ve got trouble. Deluxe’s federal friends are here and they’ve got guns and they’ve got Jimena.”
“Shitcakes!” exclaimed Deluxe. “This kind of response time, especially considering that Nijinsky’s is still probably an active site—it means there are serious resources aligned against us.”
“Did they figure out the fake phone call, you think?” I asked, too frenzied at the moment to be upset about how utterly we’d blown the idea of keeping special attention away from our secret place.
“If Constable Barranco told them where she met you and Dack, they may have the address on a hot list,” said Deluxe. “Soon as they caught it, someone made the call to move in. I did not assume coverage would be this tight, I am so sorry.”
“Quit apologizing, you’re doing your damned best, Prime,” I said, all too aware of my list of colossal fuckups strewn along this campaign of chaos.
I heard the hallway door groan open, then creak in little juttering squeaks as Persi doubtlessly tried to shut it carefully. As this was going on, there was a more distant boom from down below, and indistinguishable clattering noises.
“I think they’ve come in,” whispered Persi.
“Alena, Persi, we need to remove my detection array,” said Deluxe. “If they find it and tear it down it could trace back to us.”
“I think they know we’re involved one way or another,” I grumbled, as Persi came trotting down the hall on her tiptoes, trailing her unique colours. She was masterfully quiet.
“True, but it may also help them reverse engineer what we know about Eden.”
“Are we sure that’s a bad thing?”
She started to speak, but then seemed to hesitate.
“First things first,” I said. “Let’s tick off Lesson Number Three.”
Persi nodded and pulled open the door. The bookshelf pulsed, dull and unexcited by our presence. She took out the red book, jammed it into the only open slot, and stood back. From my point of view, the thing went from passive-backlight mode to jackpot-slot-machine. Red light zoomed out of The Secret to Sublimation, filling up all the cracks. The other books flashed through many other colours—greens, blues, yellows, whites.
It went like this for a few dazzling seconds, but I was more interested in the background thuds and clomps issuing from a few floors down. I remembered when we first went in, we methodically checked every door on every level. Had Jimena not told them about the fifth? Had I ever told her? I thought I had.
My worries were interrupted by the sudden stoppage of the light show. All the colour was gone, except for one lone green rectangle of light. It inched itself out of the shelf, got halfway out, then spurted forward.
Persi caught it with one hand, and twisted her wrist so the cover faced upward.
The Secret to Taming the Wild. Author: good ole John BZ.
“Library book is Taming the Wild,” I said. “Let’s see inside.”
From the lower levels, someone cried, “Clear!”
Persi huffed a sigh and looked over her shoulder, then opened the book up and held it out. I looked, but saw no words written there, nor pictures or portals.
“Flip,” I said. She did. Still blank. Thumps and bangs, shouts and commands bubbled up.
“Did you go in?” asked Persi. “I didn’t feel anything.”
“No. I think it might need Fergus. Shit.”
“Switch tactics, gals,” said Deluxe.
“The device is one floor up,” said Persi. “I’ll try the other stairwell.”
She put the book into Fergus’ pack, shut the cursed door, and did her dainty little sprint toward the other end of the building. I realized I’d never ever moved past the entrance to Eden’s earthly lair. I also started to wonder what would happen when the small army downstairs encountered the special room, but forced myself to focus on the problem at hand.
“I’ll scout what I can, Persi,” I said, and willed myself to sink through the floor.
Nothing happened, as my brain simply didn’t have the mental map on how to sink. I pictured being underwater in a pool, suspended in the water by kicking my legs every so often. My view wobbled, and I didn’t dare to look down to see if I was legit floating, lest it break the spell. But my legs indeed kicked, nothing scraped my shoes.
I stopped kicking, and imagined the scene slowly shifting upwards as the lazy weight of my body fell deeper into a pool whose interior looked weirdly like an ugly old hallway. Reality obliged, and I fell through the floor. In fact, I dropped through the fifth and fourth floors like an eager lead sinker.
Once upon a time, when I was first invited to drive Deluxe’s heavily modded Lotus Evora 400, I underestimated the sport car’s giddy gas pedal and took a corner much faster than I was comfortable with. A strange combination of exhilaration and panic flashed in my heart and I compensated with poor braking technique. The result was an ultimately harmless jerky reduction in speed, a taut seatbelt punishing my boob, and an embarrassed chuckle.
This experience was similar, in terms of the growing speed and looming lack of control sparking a combination of excitement and fear. My brain engaged the brakes by abandoning the pool-imagery and totally adopting the falling-in-a-hallway imagery, and this time the third level’s floor did the punishing, first getting my ankle, then hip and shoulder as I crumpled. I did not chuckle and my boob was spared injury.
I picked myself up, about to crack wise to Deluxe and Persi, when the group of gun toting solider-types came rumbling around the corner, sharp flashlight beams leading the barrels of their weapons.
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