Strangelets (6 page)

“We’ve tried everywhere,” Anat was saying. “There’s no way out.”

“Sophie, this is Anat,” Declan said, patting her arm reassuringly.

“We’ve met,” Sophie said, trying to look less scared than she felt. “Twice, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Yes.” Anat blinked. “Sorry. I did not understand what was happening.”

“No problem,” Sophie said, although the apology seemed half-hearted. “So you haven’t been able to find a way out?”

“No.” The girl glowered at the nearest wall. “The entire hospital is encased in cement. A crazy person built this place.”

“No argument there,” Declan murmured.

Sophie considered suggesting that the crazy people largely seemed to be
inside
at the moment, but she wasn’t really up for another shaking, or worse. She understood why the others were so desperate to get out of here, but for her it seemed to be a moot point. Although if she got rid of them, at least she’d have some peace and quiet.

“The vents,” she blurted, pointing up. “That air is coming from somewhere, right?”

They followed her finger. Anat’s brow furrowed. “I can’t fit in there,” she said bluntly, examining the narrow metal frame. A faint gust teased her long black hair.

“No, but Yosh can. Zain too, probably. If we get them out, they can find another exit for the rest of us!” Declan exclaimed. “Brilliant!”

Unexpectedly, he planted a kiss square on her forehead. Sophie managed a wan smile in response. “All right, then. If you’ll just help me back to bed …”

But he wasn’t listening. “Nico! Zain! Yosh! C’mere, we’re going to give something else a try!”

Sophie gritted her teeth. Anat glared down at her like she was something unpleasant she’d found under her shoe. Other teenagers straggled down the hall, closing in ranks behind her: Yosh, Nico, and Zain, according to Declan. They were all bleary-eyed and covered in fine white powder.

The gravity of the situation suddenly hit her. This was no dream. She was a prisoner, stuck here with a bunch of strangers; one of whom had already basically attacked her. And
Declan, cute though he was, definitely didn’t seem like a choir boy. Her presence had to be some sort of mistake. Had the hospice accidentally transferred her to a juvie prison ward? The thought wasn’t comforting, especially since they were in the middle of plotting a prison break.

And she’d just helped them.

“Hey,” Sophie said, clearing her throat. “Maybe we should just sit tight. Someone will probably be coming soon.”

Anat looked at her like she was nuts, and Declan’s eyes narrowed. “I think if they were coming, they’d have popped in by now, yeah?”

“Well,” Sophie said, digging for an explanation. “There might have been some sort of emergency. Maybe they got stuck outside and are trying to get in.”

“Which is why we need to get out,” Anat snapped.

“She has a point,” Declan said. “We get out then we’ll know what’s what, yeah?”

Sophie couldn’t come up with an argument against that, at least not without accusing them all of being psychopaths. Worse, they were staring at her like
she
was the freak. At least they weren’t threatening to shove her through the vents. “Right,” she said weakly. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation.”

Anat snorted.

Declan gestured to the vents. “So we’re thinking Yosh and Zain can get up there and crawl through, maybe find a way out.”

“Us?” Yosh said in a small voice. Sophie didn’t blame her—nothing like having strangers volunteer you for a cramped, dangerous mission.

The tall blond boy—
Nico
, she reminded herself—looked skeptical. “Well,” he said, gazing upward. “It might work.”

“What if they don’t come back?” Anat demanded.

“Of course we’ll come back,” Zain said indignantly.

“I wouldn’t,” Anat scoffed.

“You have my word,” he said stiffly. Turning to Yosh, he offered, “Would you like to go first?”

She eyed the narrow opening nervously. “No.”

“All right.” Zain tugged off his shirt and turned to Nico. “Give me a hand?”

Anat paced beneath the
hole where Yosh and Zain had disappeared. Occasionally they could hear rattles and clanks from above, followed by muted conversation. “It’s been too long,” she finally said.

“It’s barely been ten minutes,” Declan snorted. “Relax and take a load off, bird.”

“I’m not a bird,” she grumbled.

He waved a hand. “It’s not an insult. Go on, then. Sit.”

Anat remained standing. She found Declan’s equanimity maddening. He and Nico had settled down on the floor beside each other, leaning against the wall outside Sophie’s room. The American girl had gone back to bed, claiming to be tired. Anat still suspected that somehow Sophie was behind all this. Although in all honesty, she did appear to be ill. Or at least, much weaker than the rest of them.

She took another small sip from the water bottle. Hard to say if the tap water was potable—she’d guess not, since there were pallets of mineral water stacked in the hallway on the boys’ side. Odd that they hadn’t been given any.
But then, all of this was odd
, she reminded herself.

And despite what everyone else seemed to think, she seriously doubted that Yosh and Zain would return for them. If the situation had been reversed, she wouldn’t.

Silence from above. Anat tried to picture the pathway carved by the vent: based on the clanks and groans emitted by Zain and Yosh’s passage, it snaked across the hall and down to the boys’ section. But did it really lead up from there? Whatever this place was, it appeared to be some sort of underground bunker. Much as she hated to admit it, the American girl was right: the vents were probably the only way out.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Declan asked suddenly.

“Me?” Anat said.

“Yes, you. I’ve already heard from nearly everyone else. Nico here was hiking, right?”

“With my father,” Nico said, sounding bored.

“Aye. Zain was in some sort of earthquake, and Sophie was about to die of cancer. I was about to be shot,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Shot? By who?” Anat asked, suddenly interested.

“Russian bastard,” he said, waving dismissively. “But what I’m thinking is that we all seemed to be in some sort of danger, yeah?”

“I suppose,” Anat said slowly, remembering the tunnel. They suffered from cave-ins all the time, she’d known that going in.

“So maybe we were all about to die,” Declan said. “Maybe that’s the link.”

“And what?” She snorted. “This is hell?”

“Purgatory, more likely,” Declan said.

“You’re serious?” Anat said, stupefied.

“How would you explain it, then?”

“I’m Jewish. We don’t believe in Purgatory.”

“Which doesn’t mean it can’t exist, right?”

“I’m not dead,” Nico said with a yawn.

“Last thing you remember is slipping on a rock in the middle of a hike, though.”

“So?”

“So, maybe you went over a cliff.”

“There were no cliffs.”

“What about Yosh?” Anat demanded. “She was just walking to school.”

“Haven’t had a chance to ask her yet,” Declan said. “We’ll see when she returns.”

“If she returns,” Anat grumbled. What if he was right? What if they were, in fact, dead, and trapped somewhere? She shook it off. She didn’t believe in an afterlife, that was Christian nonsense. Declan was just trying to frighten her.

“It is odd,” Declan mused. “I’d always figured on going straight to hell.”

“Stop talking about it,” Anat said sharply. “You’re wrong.”

“We’ll see, won’t we? If Yosh and Zain come back, and it turns out those vents don’t lead anywhere at all, well then …” He shrugged.

Anat turned her back on him and crossed her arms, refusing to listen to any more of his nonsense.

All at once, there was a groan of metal hinges from down the hall. Declan and Nico leapt to their feet. Anat was already at the hook in the corridor by the time they caught up to her.

A seam had appeared in the wall at the end of the hallway in the boys’ wing; it slowly creaked open. Anat cursed silently; she should have found that when she examined the boys’ side. Obviously she hadn’t looked closely enough.

In spite of her irritation, a wave of profound relief swept
over her. Declan had been wrong. There was a way out. They were alive.

Yosh stood there. In addition to plaster dust, she was covered in filth and cobwebs.

And she was alone.

“Bloody well done!” Declan exclaimed. “How’d you get it open?” He walked forward and examined the door. “Brilliant,” he said. “Looks like just another wall panel. Lined with concrete, too, so we wouldn’t have known even if we tackled this section …”

Anat tuned him out; she couldn’t care less about the door, as long as it stayed open. Something was off about the Japanese girl, though. She had a glazed look in her eyes, and she was clenching and releasing her fists.

“Are you all right?” Nico lay a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t react. He exchanged a worried look with Anat.

“What’s wrong?” Anat demanded. “Where is the Indian?”

“He has a name, you know,” Declan said as he came back over to them. “Young Zain didn’t get stuck in the vents, did he?”

Without responding, Yosh turned on her heel and slipped back into the darkness. They all stared after her.

“That was bloody strange,” Declan muttered. “What do you think?”

“We follow her,” Anat said.

“Well, yeah,” Declan said. “But why does she look like she’s seen a ghost?”

“Guess we’ll find out,” Nico said with a shrug, but his eyes were anxious when they met hers.

They hesitated a second longer, then Anat decided. “I’m following her.”

“Right. Let me get Sophie, we’ll be right behind you.”
Declan turned back toward the girls’ wing and strode down the hall.

Once he vanished around the bend, Nico turned to Anat and said, “I don’t like this.”

“I don’t either,” she replied in a low voice. “I’ll watch your back if you watch mine.”

“Deal.” He reached out to shake her hand. She felt old calluses on his palm. Nico gave her a broad smile in spite of the circumstances, and held the grip an instant longer than necessary. Anat frowned, hoping he wasn’t going to take watching her back too literally. “Let’s go.”

“What is this place?”
Sophie asked.

Declan didn’t trust himself to answer. He’d practically carried her up five flights of stairs and was panting from the effort. The stairwell was long and narrow, made entirely of concrete with the floors marked off by numbers stenciled in black paint. There were doors to other levels at each landing, but they were all locked, and as long as the stairs kept going up he figured they needn’t bother checking them. It reminded him of a car-park stairwell, except it didn’t reek of piss. The air was musty and stale, though, which wasn’t much of an improvement.

Yosh and Anat were well out of sight by the time he and Sophie reached the foot of the stairs. Nico offered to go last, a strange choice for him considering their slow progress. Declan got the sense that the lad was leery of turning his back on them. Under any other circumstances, Declan would’ve found that hilarious. But in truth, he found himself overly aware of Nico’s gaze on his back.

You’re being paranoid
, he told himself. Nico might be a bastard, but he had no reason to hurt them.

Still, Declan did his best to keep a few risers between them during the ascent.

There still hadn’t been any sign of Zain. Declan was praying that he’d be waiting up top, having just decided to stay there for some reason. There was something about the silence in that stairwell that was more frightening than anything else so far.

At the top a steel door stood agape, heavy and ominous looking. They emerged from it into an enormous room, the size of an airplane hangar. It was filled with computer equipment, huge towers, and complicated-looking panels. Silent and dark as a tomb, cast in an eerie red glow by emergency lights placed at staggered intervals. It looked like a scene straight out of an old James Bond film; Declan half-expected to find a villain in a swiveling chair stroking a cat.

“Wow,” Sophie said, staring around wide-eyed. “I feel like I stumbled onto a movie set.”

“Or maybe mission control?” he offered.

She issued a short laugh, but it didn’t sound very sincere. He couldn’t blame her. The place felt threatening, oppressive. Like there wasn’t enough air, despite the large open space. Even though it was clearly some sort of high-tech facility, Declan got the sense that bad things had happened here.

After all,
something
had spooked Yosh. She was standing in the center of the room with Anat beside her. They weren’t talking. Anat looked impatient: her arms were crossed over her chest and she was scowling at them. “We’ve been waiting five minutes.”

“Sorry,” Declan said. “ ’Course, you could always have lent a hand.”

Anat tossed her curls and threw Nico a glance. Some sort of silent communication passed between them, the sight of which Declan didn’t like at all.

Sophie groaned slightly, distracting him. Her forehead was slick with sweat, and she looked even paler than she had down below. She appeared on the verge of collapse. “All right, bird?” he asked with concern.