Strangelets (19 page)

Yosh blinked in the light and shrugged. “I can’t explain it. I just know.” She lowered her voice and whispered. “I can hear them, in my head.”

Anat’s grip tightened. “What are you talking about?” Privately, she thought,
In her head? She is insane
.

“More of them are coming,” Yosh continued, her voice eerily calm. “And they’ll be here soon.”

“Hello?” Nico called out
from the front hallway. “
Vater
?”

Sophie held her breath.
Please let him be here. Please let him have a phone …

“I thought his dad was American,” Declan said in a low voice.

Sophie shushed him.

“Wait in there,” Nico said, gesturing to a room on the left before heading for the back of the house.

She and Declan crept into the living room. Spartan was an understatement. Plain white walls, a black walnut floor, a black leather sofa, and matching chair. Everything looked spare and utilitarian—and filthy, illuminated by the bright sunlight pouring through the windows. Not a single picture hung on the walls, not so much as a magazine on the two end tables. Aside from the coating of dust, it was like a spread out of some Scandinavian furniture magazine.

“Cozy,” Declan murmured in her ear.

Sophie repressed a giggle. He seemed to be warming to her again; hopefully he’d forgiven her for last night. “I’d sit, but it doesn’t look like the furniture was designed for that.”

“Definitely not,” he agreed. “Looks like the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, eh?”

Nico came back down the hall. “I’m going to check upstairs,” he said, sounding choked up.

Sophie nodded, feeling a pang of empathy for him. Her family was across the country on the west coast, which in some ways made it easier. No chance of tracking them down until they found a functioning phone.

Declan was frowning as he held his cell up again. “The
battery’s almost dead,” he explained, catching her expression. “Maybe I should keep it off.”

“Probably a good idea.” Sophie didn’t add what she was thinking, that if none of them had gotten a signal yet, they weren’t likely to. The two of them stood in the middle of the room, listening to Nico upstairs, his voice increasingly desperate.
“Vater! Vater!”

“Should we check for a note or something?” she asked, scanning the room. “Maybe he left something behind to tell Nico where he was going.”

The footsteps and shouting stopped.

Declan frowned and called out, “Nico?”

No answer. They looked at each other. Declan’s grip tightened on the hoe he’d carried in from the car.

“I’ll go first. Stay back a bit, and be ready to run.”

Sophie swallowed hard. The stairs were the same dark maple as the living room floor, with no runner. At the top, they hooked right into a long hallway lined with doors, two on each side. The spare motif continued: bare white walls, bare floor. Sophie repressed a shudder. It didn’t feel like a house anyone had ever lived in.

“Nico?” she called out. “Are you okay?”

Still no response.

“Damn, I wish he’d answer,” Declan said in a voice just above a whisper.

She stuck close as they edged down the hall, wishing she had some sort of weapon. Not that she’d be able to use it, but gripping something would probably stop her hands from shaking.

They peeked in the first door on the left: a home office with a bare black desk, black chair, white rug on the black floor. Not a single paper or framed photo in sight.

The room on the right turned out to be a bathroom, done
up in black and white tiles. A series of matching towels hung in a perfectly straight row below the sink.

“Model houses have more personality,” Sophie mumbled nervously.

Declan raised a finger to his lips. They tiptoed towards the final two doors. The one on the left opened into a bedroom—Nico’s, probably, since there was evidence that an actual human being had lived there. A checked bedspread on the twin bed, a few posters of sports cars pinned to the walls, a desk overflowing with papers and other paraphernalia.

But no Nico.

They exchanged a glance, then approached the final room. The master bedroom, based on its size. More of the black and white color scheme: a king-size bed that rode low to the floor, a long bench beneath picture windows, and a dresser in the corner. Nico sat on the bed, facing away from them.

Declan heaved a sigh and said, “Feckin’ hell, you scared us.”

Nico didn’t respond. He was holding something in both hands.

Sophie approached him tentatively. From a few feet away, she could see that he was gripping a photo in one hand and some sort of official looking document in the other. “Nico?” she asked gently. “Are you all right?”

“No.” He choked out.

“Can I see?” She reached out her hand.

His cheeks were wet. He wiped them as he handed her the photo: it was printed out on a plain sheet of paper rather than glossy photo stock. It showed a boy in a hospital bed, hooked up to even more machines than she’d been attached to in her last days. With a jolt, she realized it was a photo of him.

“But … when was this taken?” she asked.

Nico shook his head. “I’ve never been in the hospital. Not like this. I broke my wrist when I was twelve, but they sent me home the same day.”

“So no memory of this, then?” Declan asked, peering over her shoulder.

“I said no,” Nico snapped. “That’s not me.”

“Looks just like you,” Declan pointed out. “What does the paper say?”

Nico handed it over, but didn’t meet their eyes.

“Bollocks,” Declan said, scanning it quickly. “Says here they were about to pull you off life support.” He held it out for Sophie to see. She recognized it immediately: a standard
Do Not Resuscitate
order. At the sight of it she shuddered, remembering the awkward conversation she’d had with her parents before signing her own, six weeks ago. Her mother had sat in the chair by her hospital bed the whole time, wringing her hands while silent tears rolled down her face. Easily the worst day of her life, the day when she’d confronted the fact that no miracle was going to save her …

She brushed away the memory. “It must be some sort of mistake.”

“No mistake,” Declan said, shaking his head. “Says that you—Nico Bruder, the name’s right here in black and white—were in an irreversible coma. Stony Brook Medical Center was planning on discontinuing life support on September first. Is this your mother’s signature?”

Nico didn’t respond.

“Your father hadn’t signed it yet, though,” Declan said. “So they were going to pull the plug—”

“Declan,” Sophie said sharply, “stop.”

“But this explains it, right? Why he doesn’t remember
anything after hiking in April.” He scrutinized Nico. “So maybe you took a nasty tumble and spent the next few months in a coma.”

“Then how did I wake up in the lab?” Nico snapped. “Why am I here now?”

Declan shrugged. “Dunno. We could ask the same thing about you, right, Sophie?” Seeing her expression, he hastily continued, “No offense, but the both of you were deathly ill, and then you landed here, and … well, you’re a little weak, but otherwise you feel fine, yeah?”

Sophie was thrown. This was something she’d trusted him with; she hadn’t planned on sharing it with the group. Angrily, she shook her head. “That’s different.”

“Is it? Maybe not. Maybe Nico here had a miraculous recovery too.”

“I wasn’t sick,” Nico protested. “And I don’t feel weak.”

“Right.” Declan arched an eyebrow. “I’d think you’d be happy. It’s not every day that you come out of a coma, yeah? So cheers on that. Maybe whatever happened cured the both of yas.”

Sophie mulled it over. On the face of it, it was absurd—cancer wasn’t “cured.” She guessed the same held true for comas. And she didn’t believe in miracles, regardless.

Of course, it was pretty absurd for a bunch of teenagers to get sucked across the planet into the infirmary beneath a research facility, too. And for whole towns to be deserted, and for weird creatures to be nesting inside auto repair shops. Absurd was the order of the day.

“I said I was never in a coma.” Nico glared at Declan as he enunciated each syllable.

Sophie drew a deep breath. It would be dark soon, and she definitely didn’t want to be wandering around at night, not
after seeing those skeletons. “We were thinking that maybe your dad left a note or something saying where he went. Should we check?”

Nico dropped his head and rubbed his eyes. He didn’t seem to have heard her.

“Nico?” she asked hesitantly. “Can you think of where he might have left something like that? Maybe—”

“Leave me alone.” He spun abruptly and left the room, shoving Declan aside as he passed.

“Hey!” Declan protested.

Sophie helped him back up. He rubbed his shoulder and glowered after Nico. “Wishing I’d gone with the other group now. To hell with this bastard.”

“You could have been nicer about that, you know,” Sophie said in a low voice.

“Nicer?” He grimaced. “It was bloody nice of me to tag along and watch his back on this little excursion. That should’ve been nice enough for him.”

“Still,” Sophie said. “He thought his father was going to be here. Then he got this shock, that maybe he’d been about to die.”

“Well, we’re all a bit shocked, yeah?” Declan said. “And we just wasted a day looking for someone who probably took off with the others. We need to get back on the road. You think Anat waited for us?”

“Sure,” Sophie said, although part of her strongly doubted it. “Let’s just try to calm him down so we can get out of here.”

“Calm my arse,” Declan grumbled, but when she left the room he followed.

They found Nico in the kitchen staring at the refrigerator door with a furrowed brow. Someone had scrawled
across the front of it with indelible marker: the bold black strokes stood out starkly against the gleam of stainless steel.

“What is it?” Sophie asked. It looked like something a mad scientist would have on his whiteboard, a mess of numbers and symbols. She recognized the symbol for
pi
, and a couple others from precalculus. There was no way she’d be able to make sense of it, though.

“Great, more maths,” Declan muttered. “I was right, this is hell.”

“Quiet!” Nico barked. “I’m trying to think.” He ran his fingers lightly across the numbers, starting with the ones in the top left corner and working his way down while muttering under his breath.

“Nico, does it say anything about—”

“I said, shut up!”

Sophie glanced at Declan, who looked annoyed. They stood there waiting for nearly five minutes.

Nico finally straightened and announced, “I know where he is.”

Anat sat on the
floor with her back pressed against the counter, the Glock gripped in both hands. Yosh was perched on top of it a meter away. She drummed her heels against the wood in a steady rhythm.

“Stop that,” Anat finally snapped.

Yosh fell still.

The adrenaline rush had dissipated, leaving Anat painfully aware of how exhausted she was. Hungry and thirsty, too, and they’d left their remaining supplies in the car outside. They wouldn’t last long holed up in here. She’d tried the tap in the small bathroom—no running water. No food, either. At
some point, they’d have to leave. All those creatures had to do was hang around.

The flashlight bulb started to dim again. Anat set the gun down and gave the handle a few hard cranks, channeling her frustration into the task. It flared brightly, illuminating the door. Staring at it, Anat imagined a cluster of creatures hunched on the other side, waiting. “Yosh. You said you can hear them?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” Yosh said. “It’s just something I’ve always been able to do.”

“Do what? Hear people’s thoughts?”

“Yes.” Yosh nodded. “I try not to, but … I just can.”

Anat mulled that over. It was implausible, but it wasn’t the strangest thing she’d ever heard. It wasn’t even the strangest thing she’d experienced this week. How was this any different from her waking up halfway across the world? Hazim’s face flashed across her mind; he seemed farther away than ever. “So what are they thinking right now? Can you tell how many there are?”

“Their thoughts are … strange. Different,” Yosh said slowly. “I can’t tell exactly how many. Four, or perhaps five? Right now they’re just waiting.”

Just like she thought. Anat rolled her head from side to side. “Does it work the other way?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Anat said impatiently, “Can you think something
at
them? To make them go away?”

“I don’t know.” Yosh sounded startled. “I’ve never tried before.”

“Try,” Anat aimed the flashlight directly at Yosh’s face. “Because there’s no other way for us to get out of here.”

Yosh closed her eyes and bowed her head. Anat felt a strange prickling along the inside of her skull, like tiny ants.

“Not me,” she snapped. “Get closer to the door and try to aim it at them.”

Yosh slid off the counter and went to the door. Kneeling down, she pressed her cheek and both hands against it. Her eyes closed again.

Anat’s heart thumped. The whole thing was insane. Maybe she should do them both a favor and end it quickly. A bullet in the head for Yosh, then one for herself. That had to be better than what would happen once they opened that door. The worst death she could conceive of involved falling prey to something else. If she was going to die, she’d prefer to do it on her own terms.

“I think it worked,” Yosh whispered. “I tried to sound like one of them, ordering the others away. I think they might be like … bees, or something. Maybe there’s a larger one in charge.”

Great
, Anat thought.
A larger one
. Just what they needed.

“There’s only one way to be certain.” Yosh reached for the handle.

Anat darted forward and pressed her palm flat against the door, holding it closed. “How about I go, since I have the gun.”

“If you insist.”

“I’ll wait another minute,” Anat said. “To make sure they’re gone.”