Deadly Designs (Design Series) (4 page)

Was it a trap? It didn't really matter. She had to try to escape. With a deep breath, she snuck up to the doorway…then bolted through.

But to what?

More darkness. She couldn't see a thing. A round, metal, hand-sized button sat barely visible on the wall beside her. She slapped her hand on it. The door closed softly behind her.

Weird. Opened by voice and by hand. Double weird.

"Thank heavens for that," she muttered. "Now if only there were lights on."

Instantly the space lit up.

"Right. Voice controlled." Storey felt like an idiot. But a quick scan showed this smaller anteroom was also empty. The only sign of another possible door was a second metal button on the far wall. Checking that there was nothing usable in the room she dashed to the button and slapped it. "Lights off," she added, not wanting anyone who might be on the other side to see her.

Although if they lived in this type of natural darkness, their vision had to be better than hers.

The door opened, smoother this time, and quieter. The doors were some sort of stone or compressed sand. Adobe maybe. She didn't know. It was definitely odd.

The next room had more lights, giving her a dim view of odd shapes.

Still, a pervading silence filled the air. Did no one speak? No music? Television? Thinking back, even the Louers she'd seen in the attack had been silent.

Yet the lights were voice, sound or movement activated.

Odd.

Taking a chance, she whispered, "Lights on half."

The lights pulsed on, dimmer this time, like fluorescent bulbs; chunks of luminosity lined the corner of the ceiling and shone on another large and empty room. So where the hell was everyone? Not that she wanted to see them, but she wanted to avoid a room full of them.

"Stylus, where are you?"

Not like it could answer her. Yet, she felt it. Sensed it trying to speak with her. A quick look around showed no stylus or paper. Everything appeared to have been formed from the same odd rock.

She could use her zipper pull again, if she had no other options. She fished it out of her pocket and held it tightly. As a weapon it wasn't much either.

Carefully, she slipped along the closest wall, willing it to lead her to safety...and to her stylus.

How was it she hadn't become sick without it? Or was it still close enough that she hadn't experienced any harm yet?

The wall went on forever. What an odd formation. Molded lumps rose from the middle of the floor as if they were furniture of some sort. Maybe this was a meeting area.

She tried to stay clear of the lumps. There's no way she wanted a repeat of her experience in Paxton's apartment where the furniture had shifted in its attempt to fit whatever sized person it needed to. Who knew what the furniture here could do? It might be made of natural materials, but that didn't stop things from doing weird stuff.

From the smell and the darkness, she'd assumed she was in the Louers' dimension. And if the Louers had already migrated to the new dimension, this one could theoretically, be empty. She brightened at that thought. Except they hadn't had time to migrate a whole species to the new dimension she'd created for them. Then again, there were only thousands of people here, not billions like in her dimension.

She couldn't imagine trying to move her people to another place. War would break out on a half dozen fronts. The first country across would probably claim the entire dimension as their own.

What a disaster that would be. How long had it been since she'd created that dimension? Hours or days. Had to be days. In the murky shadows, time had so little meaning. There were no sunrises or sunsets, no moon phases, nothing.

Storey closed her eyes and concentrated hard on connecting with the stylus. She could almost feel it. It was so vague, just a sensation really. She slid along the wall for another good fifty feet.

Where the hell was she?

***

Eric closed his eyes as the footsteps disappeared back downstairs. If those had been Storey's parents – a big maybe, because he remembered her saying she hadn't seen her father in over ten years – then something had gone majorly wrong in her dimension.

Vaguely he remembered her saying something about her family and how messed up things had become. If that man wasn't her father, then who was he and did it matter? Eric didn't want to deal with an angry male. Humans were more aggressive than his people. The Torans had evolved differently, choosing to use their psychic energy more, and had developed skills that were far superior to individuals in Storey's world. But his people weren't fighters.

Humans, on the other hand, had developed into warmongers. That's why the possibility of war on his side had stunned his people. They'd had no exposure to such violence. Only Storey hadn't been paralyzed. And she'd saved them all.

Now she was the one in need of saving.

S
torey crept around another corner. Her mouth was so dry with fear she could barely swallow.

The silence unnerved her just as badly as if she heard the sound of footsteps.

Either this place was deserted or the Louers were professionals at staying quiet.

What about children? Did they have any here? Or were they in a different location? Not that she'd expect children close to a prison. Then again, she had so little information she couldn't afford to make any assumption. For all she knew, the Louers were herding her in a specific direction – like a trap.

Taking a deep breath, she rounded another corner, her back sliding along the wall. More blank walls faced her. She'd do a lot for a map of this place. Actually she'd do damn near anything to get her hands on her stylus.

A horrible sense of loss built deep inside her. The feeling so strong she had to consider that the stylus might be moving further away from her. It felt that bad. The nausea in her stomach made her want to heave. Yet, she didn't dare think that way. She had to find it. And fast.

Then the truth hit her, freezing her body in place.
Shit
.

The stylus hadn't moved – she had. In the wrong direction.

Crap. She really didn't want to go back, but the stylus was her only hope of getting out of here. There was no choice. How could she pinpoint its location? Especially when the stylus couldn't tell her.

Either way the problem wasn't going to solve itself while she sat paralyzed with indecision.

Damn it.

She'd been communicating with the stylus somewhat. At least enough to kinda feel the answers to her questions. Could she do a hot and cold thing, like that children's game?

But she'd have to get a lot closer to test the idea out.

Groaning silently, she headed back to the entrance of the room she'd woken up in. The journey only took a few minutes. Her body didn't care; her heart had started pounding with the first step and her palms had to be leaving sweat marks. She could probably turn the lights on, but that didn't guarantee success at this point and would alert everyone as to where she was. Not that any Louers had come after her yet. And that didn't make sense either.

That just brought her back to the whole trap concept. Not her favorite one to dwell on.

The only sound was her heavy, rasping breaths. Damn. She'd never hear the stylus with that interfering. She took a deep breath and released it. Then did it again. That helped.

A bit.

At the entrance to the huge room, she peered around the doorway. Her eyes adjusted slowly to the deep darkness.

Still empty and open. That wouldn't be the most brilliant engineering she'd seen. Then again, just how far behind were these people? And yes, they were people, as much as it was hard to claim them as a relative of her own kind. The Torans, Eric's people, had developed more psychically than her own. Whatever that meant. It's not like she'd seen any examples of that.

Her people had developed differently as well. So in theory, the Louers could be more intelligent, more advanced than either humans or Torans. Or they could be the very opposite. Their living hadn't been the easiest but they had survived. Survival meant development of some kind.

She slipped past the door and headed the way she should have when she first escaped.

"Stylus, are you there?"

The faint sensation was a warm buzz in her head.

Thank God for that.

More confident now, she picked up the pace, trying to follow the warmth or coolness of the buzz as a directional signal. It grew stronger and stronger. A comforting sense of companionship. She wasn't alone. The stylus was here. Waiting for her.

Moving as fast as she could in the darkness, she passed a series of doors. Probably doors as each had a silver disc or button. She could only hope they didn't have any Torans or humans locked up in any of those rooms or she'd have to try and get them out, too. Damn, she needed her stylus.

Tuning into the buzzing noise in her head, she blocked everything else out and focused on following it.

Several long minutes later, she had no idea where she was; so focused on making the buzzing in her head grow, she'd followed the wall to what appeared to the be the end of the road. Another wall stood in front of her.

Mentally, she tapped into the stylus.
Can you feel me, Stylus?

Nothing.

Damn. She snatched up the metal zipper pull and asked the question, this time she had her hand on the wall as it jerked with the answer.
Yes.

Thank God for that. "Are you close to me?"

Yes.

And what did close mean? "Stylus, can you tell me the distance that's between us?"

Ten.

Ten what? Again, she had no idea of what measurements were used by Torans or Louers.

"Ten feet?" she asked cautiously.

Ten nacrons.

Shit.

"How long is a nacron?"

One nacron is ten sedents.

Double shit. Storey banged her forehead on the wall in front of her. Figures.

"Stylus, are there any Louers with you?"

No.

That was a relief.

"Are you contained in some way?"

Silence.

Stupid question, Storey. "Can you give me directions to find you?"

Follow the connection.

Connection? The buzz? Of course. That was how she'd made it this far, after all. She turned so her back pressed against the wall and closed her eyes. Where was the buzz coming from? The right. Great. That was the wall. No metal discs in sight.

"Stylus, I think you are behind the wall in front of me, but I can't see a way to get in."

Door.

"Yeah. That would be helpful." She thought hard. "Do they all have metal discs to show you how to open them?"

No.

Crap.

Backing up several steps, she took another look at the end wall. It made sense that there would be a way to open it, but how? The wall itself was about the length of her bedroom. And didn't that thought bring a pang to her heart? She missed her mom. That surprised her. But right now, a cup of tea with her mother sounded like the best gift ever.

Until she remembered that the last time she'd seen her mother, her father had been there, too. The same father she hadn't seen in a decade.

She shuddered. What a mess she had to clean up when she got home.

One mess at a time.

That meant getting out of here.

And that meant getting through the damn wall standing between her and her stylus.

Shit.

Taking several steps back, she ran, shoulder down, straight at the wall.

***

Eric slipped out of the closet and studied Storey's bedroom. Surely if she'd been back there'd be a sign. Like her backpack, sketchbook or even her shoes could be here. Something would have been disturbed. The trouble was he couldn't tell.

From what he could see, she hadn't made it back to her home dimension. That matched the stylus's words and her parents' conversation. That left two more dimensions that he was aware of, both potentially full of the enemy.

Not good. He was very much afraid Storey was in the new dimension she'd created.

And if so, that could be a huge problem.

With a final look at her room, he set his codex for home and sent himself back to Paxton's lab.

Paxton waited for him as the mist dissipated. "Well," he asked impatiently, "Did she make it there?"

"No. I need to go to the new dimension. Make sure she hasn't somehow gotten into that one."

"Absolutely not. We can't have any energy moving between that dimension and ours. You know as well as I do that the more we travel the more the energy instinctively aligns into a pathway. If we go over there, the Louers could eventually find their way back here."

"If Storey is over there, we have to get her back."

"Go ask your father if he knows anything about her whereabouts."

Eric frowned at his mentor. "He's not likely to tell me, you know that." Paxton refused to meet his gaze. "You think she might be dead or at least dying, don't you?"

"It's a distinct possibility. Now hurry."

Eric strode down the long white hallway. It had taken Storey's comment about the white being everywhere to make him realize how odd his world must look to her. Her dimension swelled with color and chaos. Peace and quiet were hard to find, but the place buzzed with activity. At home, calm ruled and the most excitement on a normal day was watching the sun go down. Nothing ever happened – until Storey had popped in. She'd brought some of the same chaos and color to his world, too. He enjoyed the energy and he
really
missed the chaos.

Stupid.

He missed her even more.

His father's chambers lay at the end of the hall. As Councilman, his chambers were the largest and richest of any here. He was big on appearances. Not so big on sharing.

At a white door that looked the same as every other apartment on this floor, Eric took a deep breath, thought of Storey caught in a nightmare dimension, possibly dying, and knocked on his father's door. Hard.

The door opened under his hand. Eric entered expecting to see his father holding court with the other council members. The room was silent – and empty.