A Latent Dark (42 page)

“
Ahh
, well that’s easy to do. The food here is so good.” He smiled pleasantly. “Have you enjoyed the tests so far?”

She nodded again, yawned and went to rub her eyes, forgetting for a moment the contraption attached to her head. The lights seemed so bright—she was tired of wearing the fake goggles and taking these tests. She asked him what time it was.

“It’s late,” he said. “I don’t blame you for being sleepy. After we do one more test, you may go to your room and sleep all you want. Deal?”

Assuming I can even sleep with it so bright,
she thought, nodding. “What’s that?” She pointed at the briefcase that now sat between them.

Ostermann opened it, removed a clipboard, and turned it around for her to see what was inside. A blank white square rose from the middle of the case, suspended by a series of hinges and braces above a complex assortment of tubes, wires and filaments. It looked so delicate, Skyla worried she might break it by breathing too hard.

“It’s pretty,” she said. “What is it?”

“It’s a projector,” he said. “I’m going to show you a series of images, similar to what Dr. Stintwell showed you, only I want you to just relax your eyes when you look this time. They all have a center, so I want you to look right at the middle of each one. Can you do that?”

Ostermann pressed an unseen button on the back of the case and Skyla was surprised to see shapes leaping onto the screen. They reminded her of Missy’s old book she carried with her and the Celtic knots she saw throughout. These, however, were more geometric in style and even seemed to move. Gray began to seep in from the edges of her vision.

The machine outside the walls of the room made another hum and a click as the image changed.

“Good,” Ostermann said. “Very good.” From the edge of her vision, she could tell from his shadow that he was both excited and a little frightened.

The next image, though similar, left an afterimage on her retinas. The shapes were more like a spiral, drawing her deeper into its center. When it actually began to move, rotating in on itself, Skyla was overwhelmed with vertigo. She could actually feel herself falling into it.

For a moment, the walls melted away, leaving her suspended and alone with
Ostermann’s
shadow, as solid and real as any person. She felt a tunnel in space opening between her and if only she could touch it—

The machine hummed and clicked. The image vanished.

“I think that’s enough for now,” said Ostermann with a twitchy, nervous smile. He closed the suitcase without looking at her and she noticed that his hands were shaking.

“How did I do?” she asked.

He took a small breath, then looked directly at her. “You did terrific. Would you like to be taken back to your room?”

Skyla nodded and yawned so hard she thought her jaw would snap. Ostermann pressed a button on the desk. Almost immediately, Dr. Stintwell entered the room.

“I’d say we’re done here for now Laura,” he said. He picked up his briefcase, then plucked the halo gently from Skyla’s head.

Stintwell took Skyla’s hand. “Tired?”

“Yes, Dr. Stintwell—”

“You can call me Laura if you want. Let’s go to your room.”

Skyla stifled another yawn as Laura led her out of the room. They didn’t say much as they walked down the corridor. Skyla looked around wearily as the doors passed by, all whitewashed and clean.

“How do they keep it all so new looking?” she asked.

“That’s because it
is
new,” Laura said. “Sort of.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, this facility wasn’t working for a long time. They only recently fixed it up, painted it, installed some new lighting. Now it is helping to power the entire city.”

“Why wasn’t it working before?”

“Your room is right up ahead,” Stintwell said as though she hadn’t heard the question. Skyla hid her irritation.

As tired as she was, a pair of doors caught Skyla’s attention and she stopped to look at them. They had embossed patterns along the wood, with ornate handles that had been freshly painted over with the same boring white. Small holes at the top of the doors, suggested that there had been something nailed there at one time.

“What’s in these rooms?” she asked.

“Oh, just some old storage, they haven’t gotten to upgrading yet.”

Now Skyla
knew
she was being lied to. As Laura led her down the hall, she couldn’t help but feel as though those rooms would be worth investigating, and Skyla had a good idea just how to do that.

“We’re here,” said Laura. “I hope this wasn’t too exhausting for you, Skyla. I know you must be terribly tired.”

“Yes,” she said, “but I had fun. I never knew anything like this existed in all the territories…”

As Laura held the door open, listening intently to Skyla go on and on, she never realized that the girl was, in fact, looking at the locking mechanism to the door, trying to think of a way to get past it.

“…and everyone is so nice!” Skyla finished.

“Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself. I had fun too.”

With that, Laura stepped back to let the door close and latch. Skyla’s bed was adequately comfortable, but that light invaded everything. She stared at the ceiling, then turned her head and looked at her quarters. It was all so bland, white and clinical.

As she lay on the bed, trying to ignore the eternal brilliance of the room, she thought again and again about those two doors. Why were they different from all the other doors? And those beautiful scrolled handles, why paint them over? Surely they must have been much nicer than the room she was being kept in.

Kept in.
That was the operative word wasn’t it… Doors. Everywhere doors, and none of them accessible by her. Of course, if Orrin was here…

Orrin could pick those locks,
she thought. What would Orrin do, she wondered. Something clever, no doubt. She could try to be clever too.

*

Laura walked into her office and sighed, closing the door behind her. She was exhausted from arguing with Pall all night. Everything was happening far too quickly for her comfort. They still hadn’t even gone over all the data yet, and here he wanted to start using subjects. What a great idea.

She flopped down into her chair and slid a file folder out into the center of her desk, opening it. She rested her chin on interlaced fingers as she read the yellowed paper. It was just a fragment of a report, burned on the edges, the paper brittle beneath the lamplight.

Clipped to the paper was a photo of a man in a neat beard, standing between two young girls—twins, so they said. You wouldn’t know by looking at them. The “older” girl was thinner, almost wiry somehow. Her eyes were the haunted, crow’s-feet eyes of a sixty year old, a widow, not the eyes of a fourteen-year-old girl. Yes, the older twin was peculiar to say the least.

But how had two identical twins grown apart so drastically and at different rates?

That was the big mystery wasn’t it? Laura’s predecessor, Jacobes had almost found out. He had almost proven—something. His writings and reports echoed the theories of
Zwicky
and Millikan, ancient writings, practically illegal in this day and age. And yet The Church allowed it, encouraged it.

Until it all went so wrong somehow
, she thought, tracing the outline of the girls in the photo with a fingernail.
And somehow these two girls were at the center of it.

Richard
Jacobes’s
last journal entry was harried, desperate. It almost seemed as though the man was horrified at what he had discovered, but then why were the pages almost all destroyed? Who had burned them? The only readable entry seemed to be interrupted, as if someone had disturbed the man mid-sentence, causing him to drop his pen.

This entire place is one big mystery
, Stintwell thought as she pinched the bridge of her nose.
And Ostermann is just charging ahead, obsessed with that machine, like it’s the only thing that matters.

To be fair, the engine was important, essential even. They had managed to power the entire city with it—but on sin? Laura still didn’t buy that. It was something else, something that they couldn’t see, something that drove this strange generator.

She squinted at the journal entry. It was as if someone had come and taken Jacobes from his room. The only problem was that his room had been locked from both sides. And then what happened? Hundreds of souls lost? Erased by a loose cannon nobody understood?

 “Where did you go, Richard?” she said to the photograph. The man only smiled back, his eyes laughing, hiding secrets.

An orange light began flashing on her desk. She looked at it and frowned. Hadn’t she put Skyla to bed? She pressed a button next to the light.

“Stintwell,” she said.

“The girl had a nightmare,” said a voice from the desk. “We thought you would want to know.”

“Thanks, I’ll be right down.”

When she arrived at the girl’s door she heard crying. She opened it and found Skyla sitting bolt upright, looking scared and alone. It broke her heart.

It’s so unfair how we are treating her
, she thought.
The girl has no one and we are keeping her as a prisoner, a tool. That’s all she is to The Church, isn’t it?

Skyla turned and looked at her, her eyes were red. She sniffed.

“Hey… Are you okay?” Laura asked, entering the room. “They said you were upset.”

“I… had a dream about my mother.” Skyla wiped a hand on her cheek.

“You did? Do you want to tell me about it?” Laura suddenly wished she had brought her notepad.

Skyla sighed and wiped her nose. Laura presented a tissue, which the girl took gratefully, blowing her nose into it. She asked for a second, used it and then balled them in her tiny fist.

“She was alone… and she was scared,” Skyla said. “She… she was running from the preacher.”

“The preacher?” Laura asked. “Who’s the preacher?”

“The man all in white, the man with the long shadow,” Skyla said. “He was chasing her. Just like he chased me.”

All white
, thought Laura. She knew that one of the founders of the institute was involved in retrieving the girl, but what had he done to torment her like this? She had met him once or twice and she found him charming, if somewhat persistent. His revivals out east were legendary and she understood he had made a small fortune from them—money that had thankfully kept her employed.

“Why don’t you tell me more about your dream,” she said.

Skyla took another ragged breath. “He was chasing her through the hall.” She pointed to the door. “Just outside. It was dark though, and she was screaming.”

Laura hugged the girl, surprising them both. “Well,” she said, “I was just out there and I guarantee you that the lights are all on.”

“I know it was just a stupid dream,” said the girl, so small next to her. “It just seemed so real.”

“You want to look for yourself?” Laura asked.

Skyla gave the door a tentative look and then nodded. Laura stood and led her by her hand, and using her key, she opened the door wide. “See? It’s completely safe.”

Skyla took a step out into the doorway. Bracing herself with both hands on either side of the doorframe, she leaned out, looking left then right. When she leaned back into the room, she smiled at Laura.