Flux (21 page)

“Hey, where’d you go?” Deller’s words came to her as if through a wall, muffled and indistinct. With a giggle Nellie readjusted to their home level’s vibratory level and pulled him through the gate. For a brief blurred moment there was nothing, and then their bodies adjusted to the new vibratory rate and the bedroom came into view.

“Whoa!” Deller hissed. “What a rush.” His eyes traveled around the room and fell on their doubles, standing near the window. “What’s with them?” he whispered.

Nellie shrugged. She hadn’t given the doubles a second thought. As usual they were doing their own thing, which was pretty much a copycat version of her thing, or what she would have been doing if she wasn’t traveling the levels. From the tone of their voices she guessed they were quarreling, but what else was new for her and Deller? Fortunately Deller’s double had his back to them and her own was standing, arms crossed and head down, refusing to look
up. All she and Deller had to do was make a run for it. Giving him a poke, she turned toward the gate but was stopped by the frown on his face.

“Dirty bugger,” he muttered.

“What?” hissed Nellie.

“I don’t like him,” whispered Deller. “I can tell what he’s thinking, and I don’t like him.”

“I don’t like my doubles either,” Nellie snapped. “So I don’t waste time thinking about them.” Opening the gate to the next level, she stepped through it and stood waiting with her arms crossed. She would give Deller twenty seconds, and then she was sealing the gate. He’d promised to do what she said and here he was, already giving her trouble. It would serve him right, getting stuck in another level with two crotchety dou—

His face appeared in the opening and Nellie blew out a sigh of relief. With a last glance over his shoulder, Deller stepped through the gap and she sealed it. By the time she’d finished, their bodies had adjusted to the new vibratory rate and she found Deller staring angrily at the next set of doubles. Still on the other side of the room, the two were doing a strange kind of dance, Deller’s double taking a step forward, Nellie’s whimpering and ducking back.

“C’mon,” Deller’s double said pleadingly. “Just once.”

“No,” whined Nellie’s double, twisting her arms tighter around herself. “Leave me alone.”

“I just want to feel them,” said Deller’s double. “You won’t get pregnant. Lift your shirt so I can see.”

Magazine stuff
. Nellie snorted quietly. She should have known, after the pictures she’d seen in the Skulls’ headquarters. Why didn’t her double just kick the jerk where he needed it?

With another whimper her double backed into the wall, and Deller took a deep hissing breath. “I’m going to punch him in the gut,” he said.

Grabbing his arm, Nellie focused and took him out of sync with the surrounding vibratory rate. He was looking too weasely, as if he
was about to cause a whole lot of ruckus, and she wasn’t having it. Who knew if the lab-coated men were watching for travelers, and which level they might be focusing on?

“Hey!” came Deller’s muffled voice, his hazy transparent figure turning this way and that, trying to see through the blur that now surrounded him. With a tiny satisfied grunt, Nellie crossed her arms and waited. Let him sweat it out for a minute, and then she would bring him back into sync. That would teach him to
listen
when she told him to.

But Deller’s hazy figure wasn’t standing submissively, waiting for her to show mercy. Taking off across the room, he slid to a halt at the place he’d last seen his double, then raised his fists and began swinging wildly. Grimly Nellie altered her vibratory rate to match his and started toward him.

“Get lost!” Deller shouted, now clearly visible to her as he shadowboxed with the air. “Leave her be, you lousy shit. She’s just a kid, all alone, with no one to help her. You’re thinking screwed, you don’t know what you’re doing. You’ve got to wake up, wake up!”

“Cut it out!” Nellie hissed, grabbing his arm. “Stop it right now or I’ll go back to our level and leave you here to rot forever, d’you hear?”

Deller stopped swinging and stood breathing heavily. “Yeah, okay,” he said finally.

“They can’t hear you when you’re out of sync anyway.” Nellie could barely speak, her fury thudding through her like blood. “Now, you listen to me, Mr. Big Shot Skull, and you listen good. If you’re going to travel the levels, you’ve just got to learn that another level isn’t
your
life. What goes on there goes on, but it has nothing to do with you. We’ve got seven more levels to go this afternoon. Are you going to try to solve every problem you see in each one?”

Deller shrugged without looking up. “Maybe.”

Nellie let out a long hissing breath.

“Okay.” Deller slanted her a glance. “But it isn’t easy when it’s me I’m watching, pulling that kind of shit.”

“It isn’t you,” snapped Nellie. “Just one of your thoughts.”

“I don’t like that thought,” Deller said grimly.

Nellie shrugged and turned toward the gate. “Get over it,” she said, touching his arm and bringing them back into sync. Immediately Deller glanced toward their doubles. Following his gaze, Nellie saw them standing with stunned expressions, staring at each other.

“You didn’t have to call me a shit,” said Deller’s double, stepping back. “All I wanted was a lousy feel. That doesn’t make me a pervert.”

Nellie’s double gaped at him, wordless.

“I’m not a pervert,” repeated the boy, still staring at her. Abruptly he turned and left the room.

A look of glee crossed Deller’s face. “They did hear me!” he crowed. “You said they couldn’t, but you were wrong.”

Across the room, Nellie’s double looked up and saw them. Starting back, she cried out in fear.

“Don’t mind us,” Nellie told her airily, waving a hand. “We’re just passing through.” Turning from the girl she opened the gate to the next level, dragged Deller through, and sealed it behind them. Then she stood in the surrounding blur, deliberately keeping them out of sync with the new vibratory rate. Anyone would need a breather after the pack of nonsense she’d just been through.

“Why could they hear me?” demanded Deller, staring around himself. “I can’t hear you when you’re vibrating differently than me.”

Nellie shrugged. “Things leak through sometimes, I guess.”

“Funny thing is,” said Deller, looking more and more pleased. “My double thought it was your double saying those things. I think maybe she did too.”

Nellie sighed. “I’m going to bring us into sync now. Then we’re going straight to the place they took Fen without any more nonsense.”

“Okay,” said Deller, sobering. She touched his arm and the room came into focus, empty of anyone but themselves. “Hey, what happened to them?” Deller demanded, staring bug-eyed.

“Took off, I guess,” said Nellie, opening the next gate. “Good thing too.”

“That’s because my double got the message,” Deller said eagerly. “I can be pretty dense, but if you yell loud enough, I usually get it.”

“That was in the last level,” Nellie said dismissively.

“Nellie,” said Deller, touching her arm. “They’re all
me
. Why wouldn’t they all get it, whatever level they happen to be in?”

She stared at him. This was only his second time traveling the levels, but there were already things he understood that she didn’t. It bugged her.

“Whatever,” she said, shrugging off her irritation. Images of her doubles running down a narrow staircase, through a doorway and into the street flickered through her mind, but she brushed them away. Who cared what they were doing? If they’d taken off, they would find somewhere else to live, or get over their fear and return to the house. And the fact that they were no longer in the bedroom was going to make it much simpler to progress through the next six levels.

Quickly she stepped through the gate. An initial glance showed the room to be empty, but a closer look revealed a ghostlike blur shimmering on the bed. Hazy and indistinct, the figure was vibrating at a different rate than the surrounding molecular field, but Nellie was still able to catch the vague glimmer of a gold-brocaded dress and the familiar all-knowing smirk.

“What’s the matter?” asked Deller, coming up behind her.

“Nothing.” Slitting her eyes ominously at the figure on the bed, Nellie opened the gate to the next level. What was important was that she act as if nothing unusual was going on. Under no circumstances could Deller or his mother ever meet her knife-carrying double. Deller was already muddled enough, confusing himself
with his doubles. Just imagine what he would think of her if he met that gold-brocaded freak?

“Let’s keep moving,” she said to Deller. Immediately the figure on the bed rose to its feet and stood as if waiting. Sending it a malevolent glance, Nellie stepped through the gate. “C’mon,” she hissed at Deller. “Hurry up.”

He followed and she sealed the gate behind them. For a moment she stood watching, but no ghostlike blur oozed through the closed seam. With a sigh of relief she glanced around the room and saw the hazy outline of her double in the gold-brocaded dress, standing beside the bed. Swallowing hard, Nellie beat back a wave of panic. How had her double gotten here so fast? There was no gate near the bed, and no other way for her to have passed so quickly from the last level to this one. Hissing, she turned toward the next gate and opened it. Without waiting for Deller, she stepped through and adjusted to the new vibratory rate. There, as she expected, she found the hazy figure of her silently waiting double. Giving it her back, Nellie watched Deller come through the gate.

“Three more levels to go,” he said, looking around. “Why d’you think Fen came this far? What was he looking for?”

This is just like taking a morning crap. Same stuff coming out every time
, Nellie remembered. “To see if anything would change,” she shrugged. Without another glance at the hazy figure by the bed, she opened the next gate and stepped through it. At least her double wasn’t trying to make contact with Deller. If she had nothing better to do than follow them around playing mind games, then let her. Grimly Nellie progressed through the next level, Deller muttering along in her wake.

“This is the ninth level,” he said. “It’s the next one, isn’t it?”

Nellie nodded. As she sent her mind into the closed seam before her, she sensed nothing unusual, nothing that would indicate the presence of the lab-coated men. Taking a deep breath, she drew it open. There before her stood the black charred barrier. “C’mon,”
she said to Deller, and stepped through. As she did, the hazy figure of her double appeared to her left, also facing the singed wall.

“So this is it,” said Deller, coming up beside her and staring at the scorched space.

“This used to be another bedroom,” said Nellie. “Exactly like all the others. It had the same gates. When they took out the bedroom, the gates went too.”

“Level ten,” mused Deller. Stepping forward, he ran a tentative hand along the charred wall. With a gasp, he stepped back. “It feels like—”

“Like what?” asked Nellie, surprised. She’d also pressed her hands to the barrier to get a reading on Fen. It hadn’t given her the ooly-goolies.

“Like burnt flesh,” Deller whispered.

Skin
, came the thought, as if spoken directly into Nellie’s mind. Whirling, she stared at her double, certain the ghostlike figure hadn’t spoken aloud. Then as she watched, her double stepped forward, passing directly into the charred wall. A dense humming started up, her double vanished, and the humming cut off.

Nellie let out an astonished cry. She’d felt the moment her double had passed into the wall as if it had happened directly to herself—a sensation like a million tiny needlepricks of sound passing through her body. And there had been no gate, she was sure of it. Her double had simply stepped through the barrier that separated this level from the next without opening a gate, without even looking for one.

Chapter 14

T
HEY WERE SITTING
at the kitchen table, waiting for a car- serole to warm up in the oven. A dense silence hunched over the room, broken only by an odd pinging noise the oven made as it heated. Tilted back in his chair Deller sat with his eyes closed, running a fingertip repeatedly over the bandage on his wounded hand. Slouched opposite, Nellie watched the tense line of his jaw, the twist of his lips as thoughts surfaced onto his face. Fidgets kept jumping out all over her skin. She wanted to reach across the table and touch the soft heat of his arm; she wanted to take off pell-mell in the opposite direction.

“You think he’s already dead?” Deller asked abruptly, opening his eyes. “Kids die in those experiments, don’t they?”

“I dunno,” Nellie said reluctantly. “I don’t remember much about that stuff.”

Deller watched her through the muted green of his eyes. “So you really don’t know what they did to your brain.”

She shrugged, glancing away. “I know it somewhere inside me. I can feel it hidden, like a secret, something I’m not supposed to know. It’s like a heavy ...” Her face scrunched up as she thought. “...
blob
sitting in my brain. Sometimes I get blurry pictures of what happened.
Doctors in lab coats. White rooms full of machines. Other kids.” A thick shudder oozed through her, and she trailed off.

“What were they doing to the other kids?” Deller asked quickly.

“They were in machines. They weren’t dead. I don’t remember anyone being dead.” Nellie’s eyes darted in and out of his gaze. “No blood, or anything like that.”

“Just machines?” Deller said hopefully. “That’s the way you saw Fen, right? In a machine?”

“Yeah, and he wasn’t dead,” Nellie said emphatically. “I didn’t see any blood, not even bruises.”

Deller watched her steadily, checking her face for lies. She stared back, feeling the desperate need of the moment, trying to carry its weight without a fidget or cough. Finally he lowered his chair and placed his bandaged hand on the table. Peeling back one edge of the bandage, he lifted it off. Quietly Nellie sucked in her breath. The stub of his missing finger was swollen, the flesh jagged and purplish-red, straining against the stitches that held it together.