Paper Dolls (31 page)
Authors: Anya Allyn
A rumble cut in above the whistling wind. Something was coming.
Three large black vehicles appeared in the distance. The vehicles moved in fast, their metal bodies tank-like with guns extended in front.
“Go!” Molly shouted behind me.
We dashed into the tunnel, our shoes slipping and sliding on the icy surface. The tunnel turned and warped in all directions. I prayed whoever or whatever was inside the tanks hadn’t seen us, and couldn’t spot us inside the tunnel.
The tanks rolled past.
Molly blew into her hands. “We have to keep moving, or we’ll freeze. And find shelter. I don’t know what they expect we’re to do here, but we won’t survive long dressed like this.”
Aisha wrapped her arms around herself. “I know what they want.”
Molly and I turned to stare at her.
She shrank away from us. “They want to trigger memories, so that when they bring Cassie back, they can take her into those memories.”
I eyed her bitterly. “How can I remember a place that isn’t even in our world?”
“Emerson explained it as—“
“I don’t care what Emerson explained it as,” I cut in. “I don’t care. Why don’t you just get away from us? Just go!”
She stumbled backwards, falling on the ice. She raised frightened eyes to us. “We can’t beat them. You know we can’t. They hold the universes in their hands. We can all share in the new worlds. They said you and Molly would just take some… convincing. Maybe if we just do what they ask….”
Molly’s features hardened. “You told them everything. Everything we were finding out. Everything we were planning. You told them I lived, didn’t you? And you knew who the Batistes and Baldcotts were, didn’t you?”
Aisha’s eyelashes fluttered downwards. “Not from the start. But Emerson flew out to see me, not long after you moved to Miami. He showed me a glimpse of the worlds out there. I saw… things. Horrible things. We can’t stop this. We have to choose a side.”
Molly whirled around and kept walking, her red hair bright against the icy tunnel. I stepped after her, leaving Aisha behind. We hurried through the tunnel to the other end. Snow swirled past the opening, thick and blowing. The roof of the tunnel cracked and began to sag under the weight of the snow settling on top.
Ahead was an enormous round object, white and almost completely covered with snow.
“What is that?” Molly gazed hesitantly around her.
Five figures tramped through the snow in boots and huge jackets. Children.
A tank roared in between the globe and the children. Two men jumped from the tank and wrestled a screaming child inside. An older girl chased after the child, but the tank pulled away. She put her hands to her head in despair, her fur-fringed hood falling away from her face.
Her skin was a deep olive color, black hair falling around an oval face.
A cry caught in my chest. “Sophronia!”
Molly gripped my arm. “God... it's her....”
We rushed forward.
Sophronia glanced back at us, her body stiffening.
The white globe split completely down the middle in an even line, snow shedding from its enormous surface. The children ran towards it. Sophronia turned and followed close after them.
“Come on!” Molly stumbled in the thick snow as she desperately tried to reach Sophronia.
The children disappeared inside the opening. Molly and I raced ahead, plunging ourselves through just before the globe snapped shut.
We sat gasping for air. The children ran on through the interior of the globe. We were in some sort of amphitheater—a massive screen running around the round wall. The children disappeared through a concealed door. Molly struggled to her feet and pulled me up. “We have to find her!”
We made our way through the globe. On the other side was the interior of a sprawling building—all white surfaces soaring many levels high. I glimpsed a sight of black hair flying down a set of stairs. We raced for the same set of stairs. Above our heads sat an enormous tilted ceiling, with the circular viewing window of an aquarium set into it. A huge, single shark swam past our heads.
A dread sense enveloped me. Slowly I turned to look out a window on a far wall. Through the dim haze and snow I could just pick out the outlines of dark rectangles on what I’d thought were tall, spindly mountains. But the mountains were not mountains. They were crumbling highrise buildings with every window smashed in.
I grasped Molly’s arm, stopping her. “I know this place,” I breathed.
She shot me a questioning glance.
“I know it. I’ve seen it. Only it isn’t built yet… we’re… still on earth. In Miami. This is a science museum.”
Molly's eyes grew large. “We're in Miami...?" She gazed outside the same window. "Cassie, we have to catch up to her.”
Swallowing hard, I nodded. We dashed down the rest of the stairs. A door at the end of a hallway swung slightly on its hinges.
“This way!” I ran and pushed the door open. Another set of stairs led downwards. Far below, a dim area spread out, barely lit by a weak and flickering bulb. Sophronia stood before a door, wrestling with a set of keys and locks. She cried out as she turned her head and saw Molly and me at the top of the stairs. She backed away, stumbling on her twisted leg. “Don’t come any closer!”
“Sophronia… please….” Molly begged her. “It’s us.”
She shook her head. “I know who you are. Stay away. Get away from here.”
“I don’t understand,” I cried at her. “Why won’t you talk to us? For months it's been killing me wondering what happened to you….”
“Now you know.” Her hands closed over the keys, hiding them from our view.
“What’s behind the door?” Molly’s voice was leaden. “What don’t you want us to see?”
Her dark eyes gazed back in defiant fear. “If you try to get in there, I’ll kill you. I swear on all that’s holy I will.”
Footsteps charged behind us. A strong body ploughed into us, grabbing Molly and I around our midsections. We toppled over the stair railing. I screamed midair, shielding my face with my arm, protecting myself from the sight of the floor racing up to meet me.
Blackness closed over me. I was back in the churning shadow of the serpent. Whoever had hold of me let go, spun away….
“This way, if you please,” he told us.
The basement was airless and dimly lit. A man sat with hunched shoulders against a support beam.
“Dad….”
The door was closed and locked behind us.
My father raised wide, confused eyes to me. “God… Cassie. They got you too? I don’t know what the hell’s going on here.”
I knelt before him. “It’s me they wanted all along. I’m so sorry you got caught up in it too.”
“Why? Why do they want you? Who are these people? I knew something was up with them the first time I laid eyes on them in Copper Canyon.”
“It’s… something to do with the dollhouse. I don’t understand it either.” I couldn’t explain everything that had happened to my father, not tonight.
“And they have your friend too.” Dad nodded a grim greeting at Molly. “Whatever it is they want, they’ll stop at nothing it seems.”
I struggled to turn and sit beside him.
“God… you’re freezing.” He stared down at where my arm touched his. “What have they been doing to you?”
I was starting to drift, my mind and body exhausted. “I’m okay….”
The light slowly extinguished, plunging us into pitch darkness.
I collapsed into a heavy sleep on the bare cement floor.
My dreams were a maelstrom of shadows and nightmares. Images rushed at me, sped past me. I travelled at enormous speed, through sunlight and darkness, through time itself. Sophronia stood at the center of it all, her dark eyes filled with fear.
My body shuddered awake. I struggled to a sitting position. The light was on—that same dim light from the night before. Molly slept beside me.
I turned to check my father. My back stiffened. A figure was crouched behind him, a sharp blade to my father’s shoulder. The figure’s hand slammed over my mouth. I screamed against the flesh, my scream muffled.
“I swore I’d never do that to you again,” came a regretful voice.
That voice. I knew that voice so well.
I turned stared into the dark eyes of Ethan McAllister. His hair hung about his face, long and dirty. His clothing—like a tramp’s—was ill-fitting, worn, and far too warm for Miami. An odor of dampness rose from his skin and clothing.
I remembered. I remembered his hand clamping over my mouth when he climbed through my bedroom window, so many months ago. He’d promised then he’d never do that again.
“I wasn’t about to hurt your father.” His hand dropped away. “I was cutting the ropes.”
“How is it that you’re here?” I gasped.
His gaze searched my face. “I’m here because of you.”
“You’re a monster—just like the rest of them. How did they get you here?”
He placed two fingers lightly on my lips. “You don’t know the whole story. Don’t judge me on what you know.”
“I know enough.” I shrank away from him.
“You know me, Cassie. Don’t say you don’t. You know me. You’re the only girl who ever did.”
“I’m not the stupid girl I was when I camped with you in the forest. I don’t… I don’t feel for you the way I used to. I don’t feel anything for you anymore.”
He sighed from deep in his chest. “I shouldn’t expect more. And I won’t say more, except that you were never stupid. You were the one who kept me together, kept me from throttling Henry’s neck. If I’d done that, we never would have found the underground. The secret of the underground might have died with Henry.”
“But you knew about the—“
“Inheritance? Yeah, I did. But that’s all I knew. I didn’t know where it was stashed. I had no clue about the underground. But we don’t have time now for explanations.”
He turned away, his knife sawing at the thick cord around my father’s torso. My father blinked groggily from his sleep.
“It’s all right, Mr. Claiborne,” Ethan told him. “I’m cutting you free.”
My father straightened, muscles tensing in his neck and shoulders. “Who the hell are you?”
“A friend of Cassie’s.” Ethan cut through the first of the ropes.
I shook my head, struggling against the cord. “He’s not a friend. He’s one of them. Him and his grandfather. Dad, this is Ethan McAllister.”
Ethan knelt back. “Sir,” he said to my father, “my great-grandfather was killed by these people. And very possibly my parents. I am
not
one of them. We’re running out of time. At half past six, the people will be back.”
“How do you know that?”
“I heard them talking. We need to hurry.”
Molly roused, moaning from the pain of sleeping on the hard floor with her hands tied. She stared in shock at Ethan.
“I don’t know what to think,” said my father. “But son, as soon as you’ve cut my ropes, you’re to hand me that knife.”
Ethan nodded and sawed through the last rope binding my father.
My father sprang free and cut the ropes from me and Molly.
A chill wind blew in our faces as we stood on the pier at the back of Zach’s house. Molly and my father boarded the yacht—my father hastening to raise the sail.
Ethan stood back, a dark figure in a thick coat and boots on the pier.
“Ethan, get on the boat,” I called against the wind.
He shook his head. “I can’t come with you.”
“You have to.”
“Cassie… no....”
I ran back to him, clasping his arms. “I still don't know why you're here or how you got here. I don't know if you're telling the truth about those people murdering your family. I still don't know whether to trust you, but you did get us out of there. You have to come now or they'll kill you.”
"I'll die if I go with you."
"You're not making sense...."
His hair flew around the moonlit angles of his face. “I’m not from here. My universe… is not this one.”
Shock ripped through me. “When I came back through the shadow… someone else came with me—someone who just tried to kill me. Tell me that wasn’t you….”
He exhaled a long breath. “It was me. But I wasn’t trying to kill you. I was trying to save you.”
“I don’t understand… any of this….”
“You will. But right now, you need to go.”
I refused to release my grip on him. “If you’re not the Ethan I know, who are you?”
His jaw tensed. “I’m the one you know.”
“How could you be? The Ethan I know is in jail in Australia, waiting trial.”
“He is not the Ethan you knew. Not the Ethan you… kissed.”
“That’s not true… that’s not true....”
“I’m sorry… Please don’t ask me more. You need to get out of here.”
“You tell me. Now.”
His face fell into shadow as clouds crossed the moon. “Cassie… in the underground, when you crawled into the cave of the serpent, you traveled into a place... that didn’t exist in your world. The serpent didn’t exist in your world. When you escaped into the forest, it was into another universe, another earth.”
My body froze. “No… You expect me to believe this world is not the one I lived in… before?”
“Whether you believe or not, it isn't.”
“There’s another earth, in which I am living the same life right now—the life I had before the escape?”
He bowed his head. “The Cassandra Claiborne of the world you’re standing in now died in the serpent’s cave. You killed her when you entered the serpent's cave....”
I felt my mind begin to shatter. I backed away from him, shaking my head.
His eyes met mine. "Two exact same people can't occupy the same space. She was in the cave at the time you entered. She disintegrated, and you lived."
“This is crazy," I cried at him. "Crazy, stupid lies."
"Cassie, that world of snow and ice that you were just in… is your world. And mine. It’s what it became the year after you were in the underground. Each and every day is a battle for survival.”
Pain wound through my core. My entire world had just vanished—a ball of string unraveling until there was nothing left.
Lights snapped on in the house. Shouts carried on the wind, torch beams crisscrossed each other. Ethan reached into his pocket and pressed something into my hand.
“Cassie!” Molly screamed.
Ethan was gone—just black air occupying the space where he had been. I turned and gazed at the yacht. Disconnected scenes punctured my mind. Molly urgently waving me towards the yacht, her hair and dress buffeted by the strong wind. My father struggling with the rigging, trying to position the sail. And behind me, Zach racing ahead of the others, desperately calling my name.
I uncurled my fist. A piece of torn paper lay in my hand. I could only make out a few of the words. But I knew all the words, knew them by heart. I'd seen those words scrawled in Ethan's notebook back in the tent he'd put up in the forest, words I'd thought were meant for Aisha or some other girl.
There are echoes in your voice, everything you said
Everything you'll ever say, written on the mirror
A thousand, thousand times I'll stake out your altar
When rain falls through the darkening light
I'll find you, find you on the other side.
The wind snatched the paper away, blowing it far over the bay.
I could just blow away into that stormy night sky too…like the paper doll Zach once told me I was….
My world was a pastiche, a patchwork of scenes cut out by a clumsy child. And this was not even my world.
This was not my world….
***End of Book II of the Dollhouse Trilogy***
