Beyond the Reflection’s Edge (28 page)

“I’ll watch the mirror,” Nathan said, holding it up. “You punch in the code.”

Kelly gave Francesca the violin and raised a trembling hand to the keypad. “What were the numbers again?”

“Nine, three, eight, zero.” Bracing the mirror in one hand and pressing the box against his opposite side, he watched the area behind him in the reflection.

She pushed the numbers. “Nothing happened! He’s going to get us!”

“Maybe not. I see two people way down the hall who aren’t really there yet, so the mirror’s working. And I don’t see the shotgun guy anywhere.”

“What should I try next?”

Nathan looked up at the ceiling, trying to invent a new string with the pattern he had noticed. “How about… seven, five, six, two?”

She pressed through the digits, then balled up her fist and cursed. “I messed up!”

“Try again.” He showed her the mirror. “We still have time. Maybe he didn’t break the lock.”

“I hear footsteps!” Francesca said.

“I don’t see him yet, but the other two guys in the mirror are almost here!”

Francesca pointed down their hallway. “Do you mean them?”

Nathan spun around. Two guards carrying scoped rifles dashed toward them from the far end of the hallway.

Kelly grabbed Nathan’s arm. “They must have heard the gunshots!”

The guards slowed to a trot and aimed their guns. “Put your hands up!” one of them ordered.

“What do we do?”

Nathan spoke in a calm tone. “Just press the buttons.”

Another shotgun blast sounded from the exit hallway. The guards halted just before the intersection and dropped to their haunches.

Nathan clenched a fist. The guards’ timing was perfect! “There’s a guy breaking in!” he yelled. “He has a shotgun! We’ve been trying to get away!”

One of the guards touched the other on the shoulder. “Cover me, Dave!” Lowering his head, he charged toward the exit. The other guard stood and fired round after round toward the door, aiming high enough to miss his partner.

The shotgun sounded again, followed by the clanking racket of a door banging open. The second guard rushed toward the exit.

Nathan kept the mirror in place. “Now, Kelly! Now!”

Two more weapons fired, a rifle and a shotgun.

Kelly flinched. “What were the numbers again?”

A deep voice from the hallway cried, “Dave! Dave!”

“Seven, five, six, two!” The Mustang driver appeared in the mirror, but Nathan dared not tell Kelly.

Another shotgun blast. A man groaned. A single set of foot-steps approached, slow and labored.

Kelly punched in the numbers. The lock buzzed. She flung the door open, and the three bustled through. Nathan jerked it closed and took the violin case from Francesca. “Flatten!” he whispered, pushing the girls down.

Kelly arched facedown over Francesca, bracing her weight on her elbows. Moving quickly, Nathan leaned the mirror and violin against the wall and shoved the box against the floor molding. He huddled over both girls and pushed them sideways against the bottom of the door. “Hold your breath,” he whispered. Inwardly he cringed. If the guy thought they were inside, he could just blast through.

The sound of stomping feet drew nearer, out-of-rhythm footfalls that slowed as they approached. Kelly’s body trembled. Francesca’s fingers dug into Kelly’s arms.

Something slapped against the door. A few seconds later, beeps sounded from the security keypad, but the lock stayed
quiet. A deep groan filtered through the wall, then some muttered cursing and more uneven footfalls. Finally, there was silence.

Nathan let out his breath slowly, and the girls did the same. Still on his knees, he straightened his torso and angled his head to get a furtive glance at the window. A bloody handprint smeared the glass.

Picking up the mirror, he rose to his feet and looked out. Nobody was there. He reached a hand to each of the girls. “Coast is clear.”

When they pulled up, Kelly threw her arms around Nathan’s neck and held him close. “I’m sorry I lost my cool,” she whispered.

Her body brought a surge of warmth to his damp skin. “You did great. We made it, didn’t we?” He handed Kelly the mirror and picked up the violin and box.

“What’s in it?” she asked, touching the box’s blood-spattered top.

He looked it over, searching for a way to open it. “We’ll figure it out later. Right now we have to check if my mother’s in the same room where they kept Clara and Francesca prisoner.”

With Nathan leading the way the three marched quickly through the curving hallway. When they reached the door, Nathan paused, looked down the corridor both ways, and rapped lightly. Setting his ear close, he held his breath and listened. No answer.

Kelly put her mouth near the jamb and spoke into the gap. “Mrs. Shepherd? Are you in there?” Still no answer.

Nathan reached for the keypad, punching numbers: eight, four, seven, one. The lock clicked. He jerked the door open, revealing a dark room.

Kelly reached in and swiped her fingers across the wall. Dim lights on the ceiling flickered to life.

Nathan peered inside. The room, about twelve-by-twelve
feet, held only a short wooden stool, a green beanbag chair, and a few scattered sheets of paper. On one of the carved stone walls, four chains dangled from rings embedded at points spaced roughly where hands and feet could be locked in place. Obviously this was where his father had been hanging, causing him to send moans of pain across dimensional boundaries and into Kelly’s ears.

While Nathan propped the door with his foot, Kelly walked in and touched one of the shiny chains. “If Mictar wants to kill your parents, why the torture?”

“He wants the secret of Quattro. At least that’s what he said to Mom.” He picked up one of the sheets of paper near the door and read the beautiful script, definitely his mother’s handwriting. Maybe there would be a clue to where they had taken her. “Let’s gather these up and get out of here.”

As he kept watch down the hallway Kelly and Francesca collected the sheets of paper and brought them back to him.

“Here’s a stub of a pencil I found,” Kelly said, holding it in her fingertips. “I’ll bet one of your parents used it.”

Francesca showed him the top page. “This looks a lot like my handwriting. Whoever wrote this puts little swirls on the ends of words just like I do.”

Setting down the box and mirror, he took the rest of the pages and smiled at Francesca. “I guess your writing is a lot like my mom’s.” He thumbed through the pages until he found one with bolder strokes and darker, more hurried letters. “My dad wrote this one.”

“What do they say?” Kelly asked.

He flipped to the next page and shook his head. “It looks like a bunch of rambling nonsense, so I’m guessing it’s all in code. We have to find a safe, quiet place to decipher it.”

“And get that open,” she said, pointing at the box on the floor.

Nathan leaned farther into the hallway but he couldn’t see
around the curve. “I think we should stay in the secure area. With that murderer stomping around out there, I don’t think anywhere else is safe.”

Kelly winked at him. “Is there a ladies room in this hall?”

Holding the white box in his lap, Nathan sat on the floor next to Francesca, his back against the cool, tiled wall. Kelly standing with her back to him, held a handful of paper towels under the running faucet until they were moist. After turning and giving them to Francesca, she pulled another towel from the dispenser. “Want to wash your face, Nathan?”

“In a minute.” He gave the box a light shake, but nothing rattled inside. “Maybe I could open it like I did my trunk… you know, look at it in the mirror.”

While dabbing her forehead with a moistened towel, Kelly sat on his other side with the violin case between them.

A low boom thundered from somewhere in the distance.

Kelly flinched. “It seems like we’re just waiting for him to find us.”

“At least the noise lets us know how far away he is.”

“Oh, thanks. Now
that’s
a comforting thought.” Kelly wadded her towel and tossed it at the wastebasket across the room. It sailed right in and thudded at the bottom. “I wonder if Clara and Daryl got away in our dimension.”

“Yeah, I was just wondering about that, too.” He nodded at the bathroom exit. “We could try to go back, but who knows who might be there? And I don’t want to leave without finding my parents.”

Kelly laid a hand on his arm. “Don’t forget. They might not be your real parents. They might be from this dimension.”

“Yeah. I remember.” He drooped his head. Did it matter which dimension they were from? They didn’t look any different or act any different. What would Kelly think if she knew her Earth Blue father just got blasted by a shotgun? Would it
make a difference to her? Probably not. No matter how much she didn’t like what he did, she’d be devastated. It wasn’t a good time to tell her. Not yet.

Francesca threw her wadded towel toward the wastebasket, but it hit the side and fell to the floor. She let out a sigh and gazed at Nathan. “When are you going to tell me what’s going on?” she asked. “I figured out some of it, but I’m confused about a lot of things.”

Nathan swiveled his head toward her. “You’re not the only one who’s confused, but if you ask some questions, maybe I can answer them.”

She ran her finger along her tunic’s embroidered hem. “I haven’t said much, because I was too scared, and all this stuff you’re saying about different dimensions makes it worse. Not only that, while I was playing, I saw some things I’ve seen before in my nightmares, but this time I felt like I was really there. I stood next to a huge violin and bow lying on the ground, big enough for a giant, and a normal-sized man walked up and told me I had to play it to live. When I reached for the bow, the ground collapsed. As I fell, the violin and bow fell with me. I caught the bow, and pushed it toward the strings, but just as I played the first note, I was back with you. That’s when I always wake up from the dream.”

She took a deep breath and continued. “Anyway, after listening to everyone talk, I figured out that there are three dimensions. Both of you are from one, I’m from another, and this is the third one.”

“That’s right,” Nathan said. “Very good.”

“But one thing doesn’t make sense. You’re looking for your mother, but you think I’m your mother.”

Nathan slid his hand under hers. When she accepted his grasp, he cleared his throat and spoke slowly. “You’re going to be the mother of my counterpart in your dimension, which
happens to be behind mine in the flow of time. This one we’re in now is ahead of mine by five days.”

“But if there are only three dimensions, how do you see stuff in your mirror before it happens even when we’re in this one?” Francesca lifted her hand again, now displaying four fingers. “Wouldn’t that mean there has to be a fourth dimension?”

Nathan thought for a moment. “That’s right…”

Kelly rose to her knees. “The kid’s a smart one.”

“What do you expect?” Nathan said, grinning. “She’s my mom.”

Francesca blushed. “I’m not your mom, silly. I’m only ten.”

Reaching across Nathan, Kelly patted Francesca’s hand. “Don’t you listen to him, sweetheart. Just have fun being a girl, and forget about being a mom.”

Nathan raised four fingers of his own. “I wonder if Gordon and Mictar believe there’s a fourth dimension.”

“They already know about the three,” Kelly said, “so, since
cuatro
means four in Spanish, they probably believe it.”

“My father had a project he called Quattro, and he spelled it with a Q. He probably knows a lot more about it than they do, and they’re trying to turn the screws on him.” He looked at the mirror in his hands. It had come through for them at every dangerous turn. No wonder his father wanted him to look at it in times of trouble. It really worked. So was it the key to the secret of Quattro? Did his father want to keep it out of his own hands, knowing he might get captured?

Still, there were problems with the fourth dimension theory. After all they’d been through, whenever the mirror worked one of its miracles, instead of going to a fourth dimension, they always stayed in the dimension they were in already. And what about the blue and yellow dimensions? If they had Quattro mirrors, would they show fifth and sixth dimensions? He sighed. Too many questions. It was time to bounce it off another brain.

“Wouldn’t my mirror also be in this dimension?” he asked Kelly. “If Gordon and Mictar knew about it, wouldn’t they do anything to get it? And if they already killed us in this dimension, they should have been able to take it from me.”

“Unless you didn’t have it with you when you died. Remember what Gordon said when he searched our bodies… I mean, the other Nathan and Kelly bodies? He was upset that the other Nathan didn’t bring something with him. The other Nathan said something about it being locked up forever.” She picked up the box. “Want to bet it’s in here?”

“Could be.” Nathan stared at the bloodstained surface, imagining the square of polished glass sitting inside. So Tony wanted Dad to have the mirror, but how could he open the box? Wouldn’t he need a Quattro mirror to get to it in the first place? It was like having a treasure chest, and the key was locked inside. Still, maybe this box wasn’t as impenetrable as his trunk. Whoever sealed it up must have thought Dad could figure out how to open it. Unless, somehow, Tony knew someone was already there with a mirror. But how could that be?

Kelly pulled a barrette from her hair, causing her locks to fall over her eyes. “I think I see something. If I can just get rid of a little of this blood.” Biting her partially protruding tongue, she scraped the barrette against the surface. “I got it.” She held the box close to the light fixture on the wall and squinted. “It says, ‘To Flash, from Medusa.’ Does that mean Clara sent it?”

“I guess that fits.” Nathan brushed the dried blood away. “But how could she know where to take it?”

Another shotgun blast thundered in the distance, louder than before.

Kelly rubbed her goose-bump-covered arms. “Let’s just try to get it open.”

Rising to his knees, Nathan turned toward the wall and leaned his mirror against it. If it worked like last time, he would have to look in the mirror and watch the box. If it opened, then
he could guide his mirror hands into it and take out whatever was inside.