Redlisted (38 page)

Haruko’s
expression sours. “Did it work?”

“Don’t
ask me,” Aya says calmly. “Ask Adam.”

Adam closes his
eyes and tilts his head back, the muscles in his face tensing.

“I think it
did,” he concludes after a moment.

Aya stands and
faces Haruko. “You won’t seal me again,” she says,
smiling. “You won’t be able to.”

Haruko takes a
step backwards, looking confused.

“Come on,”
Adam says. “We need to get to the basement.”

We cross back
through the yard to a side door. Haruko takes a key ring out of her
pocket and unlocks it, then slips inside, turning the light on.
Inside is a storage room full of gardening supplies, tools and other
home maintenance paraphernalia.

“Why didn’t
Desmond try to call us?” Adam asks.

“How should
I know?” Haruko says, grabbing a machete from a wall full of
hanging tools and implements.

“He must not
intend for us to survive,” Aya says.

Adam takes a
sledgehammer from the wall. Aya grabs a pickaxe. I pull down the only
remaining tool that seems remotely combat-ready: a little hand axe.
It looks and feels almost like a toy. I briefly consider putting it
back, but the other three are already moving on, disappearing up a
staircase against the far wall.

The stairwell
opens into a narrow hallway. Haruko leads us to the right, further
into the house, stepping over the placid bodies of ghouls strewn
about the floor. The hallway opens into a meeting room with a lofted
ceiling and a floor carpeted with bodies.

Something grabs my
ankle as we step into the room. I tumble forward, slamming my
shoulder underneath me in a way that makes it pop sickeningly. Haruko
whirls around, lifts her machete and severs the ghoul’s hand
from its wrist. I drop the axe and scramble to my feet, clutching the
box in my left hand while trying to torque my right shoulder back
into place. I look back at my assailant for just a second, unable to
stop myself. Her face twists into a grin.

“Katherine
Avery,” the entire house full of ghouls calls in concert. “What
a singular pleasure.”

Sleep, you
bastards!
I think at them with all the authority I can muster, gesturing wildly
with the box.
Go
back to sleep!

The ghouls laugh
hideously. It’s not working. How does Adam do it?

“What the
hell are you doing?” Haruko grabs my free wrist and drags me
along behind her, sprinting through the meeting room towards a door
on the right wall. Twelve or thirteen of them are waiting on the
other side, and now several more are closing in behind us. They move
quickly. Within seconds we’re completely surrounded.

Adam grabs one of
the approaching corpses and places his open palm against her
forehead. Once again, they all fall to the ground, asleep.

Haruko starts off
down the hallway, shoving a path through the bodies.

“Where do
you think you’re going?” a familiar voice calls from
behind us. Just one voice, alone.

I turn to look. A
thin woman with green eyes and auburn hair stands on a balcony
overlooking the meeting room. She looks exactly like me, and she
sounds exactly like Mirabel.

I lunge back
toward the meeting room.

Adam grabs my arm.
“No! That’s not her,” he says. “It’s
just another doppelganger.”

The ghouls are
already starting to rise again. Adam pulls me into the hallway and
locks the door behind us. Haruko is yards away, already surrounded.
She whirls her weapon with calculated precision, beheading a ghoul
before it can pull itself upright. The others ignore her entirely,
closing in on Adam and me.

I shrink into a
corner, curling my body around the box. Adam shoves his way between
me and the surging mass of dead limbs. He shoots three times—three
of the ghouls fall—but then I hear the click of an empty
chamber. They seize his arms and legs before he can ready the
sledgehammer. Two of them latch onto him with their mouths full of
elongated teeth, ripping into his flesh.

Haruko rushes
over, sending one of the ghouls reeling to the ground with a blow to
his ear. Adam pulls an arm free; he grabs a ghoul by the scalp,
dislodges her teeth from his shoulder and slams her skull down into
his knee. Haruko grabs the one with its teeth still lodged in Adam’s
bicep and hurls it backwards, sending her machete through its throat
with a swift backhand stroke.

Only four ghouls
remain standing in front of us, but more are pounding at the door.
Haruko shoves two of them into a wall. Adam swings the sledgehammer
at the others, sending them to the ground like dominoes.

Haruko takes off
down the hallway, and Adam and I follow. As we round a corner, I hear
the door behind us give way. Haruko throws another door open, waits
for us to pass through, then slams it shut and locks it from the
inside.

On the far wall is
an elevator with double glass doors behind a metal grille. Adam
collapses the grille and begins trying to pry the doors open with his
hands. Haruko lags near the door to the hallway. She brings the
machete to her palm and slices it open, then takes her wound and
swipes it against the ground, saturating the threshold with her
blood.

Next to her, Aya
materializes from thin air. “What are you doing?”

“Warding the
door.”

The ghouls begin
slamming themselves against the other side. Haruko pulls herself to
her feet and dashes to the elevator doors; they open automatically as
she approaches. We cram into the elevator. Haruko punches a sequence
of keys into a keypad next to the doors. The combination she enters
elicits an alarm and the doors refuse to close.

“What?!”

“Let me see
it,” Adam says, placing his hand on the panel and closing his
eyes.

The door to the
hallway flies off its hinges and ghouls begin piling into the room.
As they cross through the doorway, something in their glassy eyes
mutates and goes feral. They immediately begin to turn on one
another, going for each other’s throats.

Then Mirabel’s
doppelganger appears in the door frame, carrying a revolver. She
starts shooting into the fray, aiming for my head. I duck and cover;
she hits a ghoul. She curses and begins to reload as Adam punches a
new sequence into the keypad.

The double doors
slide shut and we begin our descent.

{Kate}

“The enclave
is about a hundred yards down,” Haruko says. “We’re
fine. We’re safe now. There are level nine wards set all
through the foundation of the house. Nothing can happen down here.”

Adam nods, staring
at the ceiling. I hold the box in both arms, unable to relax.

“I still
don’t understand. Why didn’t Desmond warn you about
this?” Aya says. “And why didn’t your password
work?”

“Maybe he
did text me. I didn’t check,” Haruko says. She reaches in
her pocket and pulls out her phone. “Shit—he did.”

“What did he
say?” Adam asks.

Haruko frowns.
“It’s like he was trying to write in code, or something,
but not a code I understand.” She shakes her head.

“At any
point does he tell us to go somewhere else?” Aya asks.

“No.”

“Am I the
only one who sees what’s going on here?” Aya narrows her
eyes. “We’ve been set up. They’re planning to kill
us, take the head, and give it back to Mirabel!”

“Look, Aya,
I know you’re angry,” Haruko says, “but that
doesn’t make any sense. Why would Desmond have contracted us to
steal the head from Mirabel just to let it fall back into her hands?”

“It’s
a charade. They want to hide the fact that they’re all in
Mirabel’s pocket.”

“Why would
they have had us avoid all contact with the outside world if they
were only doing this to maintain their image?”

Aya doesn’t
answer.

Light floods in
through the transparent doors. We’ve reached the level of the
enclave. Outside, a blond man in a somber business suit is waiting
alone. He must be Desmond. He rushes to the doors as they slide open.

“You’ve
made it,” he says, smiling with relief.

“No thanks
to you,” Aya grumbles.

He doesn’t
seem to hear her, nor does he seem to notice my presence. His eyes go
straight to Haruko’s forehead. “Haruko—were you
injured?” He brushes her bangs to the side.

“Yeah, but
I’m fine now.” She pushes his hand away.

“I trust you
still have the head?” Desmond asks.

“Yes, of
course—“

“Why didn’t
you call us?” Aya demands. “Why didn’t you have
someone meet us upstairs?”

Desmond leads us
down a passage to our left. “Yes, well. I apologize for that
inconvenience. I can’t leave the body, you see.” He
inhales through his nose. “They tried to take it from me.
They’ll be sending reinforcements soon. I couldn’t risk
leaving it down here. But you’ve arrived safely, so all is
well.”

“Wait,
what?” says Adam. “Who are you talking about?”

Desmond stops. He
gives Adam a withering look. “Mnemosyne’s body. What
else?”

“No. I mean,
who was trying to take it?”

“It’s
best if we discuss this later,” he says, continuing along down
the hallway. “I can no longer be sure she isn’t
listening.”

Adam frowns. “Who,
Mirabel?”

Desmond scratches
his bicep through the fabric of his suit. “Yes—yes—of
course, Mirabel.”

“She can’t
hear us, Desmond. We’re Wardens,” Haruko says, her voice
thin.

“Don’t
be naïve,” he says. “She could listen in using
mundane technology.”

We pass a
reinforced metal door on our right. My nostrils fill with something
acrid, a combination of chemical smoke and something I can’t
identify. I notice a trickle of some dark substance seeping from the
door towards a drain in the concrete floor—a viscous liquid,
like motor oil.

“Ever since
the initial breach, I’ve been concerned that she has had
recording devices placed throughout the entire enclave. Video, and
audio, and perhaps even specially-calibrated biometric sensors,”
Desmond continues in a calm monotone. “I’ve swept the
facility for bugs. I’ve not yet found anything, but I can’t
assume we’re not compromised.”

“The initial
breach?” Haruko asks.

Desmond doesn’t
reply.

Desmond leads us
down another dimly-lit corridor to a perfectly triangular room with a
domed ceiling. The walls are lined with newspaper clippings and
photos taken by surveillance cameras and satellites. Along one wall
is an aluminum desk stacked high with papers; the other holds several
bookcases crammed with texts. The room is clean, if cluttered, but I
can’t get that strange caustic smell out of my nostrils, and
it’s starting to make my stomach turn.

Desmond removes a
leather-bound book from a shelf and opens the cover, revealing a
silver key, which he pockets. He shows us back out into the hall,
locking the door behind him.

“I’m
glad you all arrived when you did,” he says. “I’m
worried it won’t be long until Mirabel finds her way into the
compound. We can’t allow her to take the head again—“

“So you
didn’t give it to her in the first place?” Aya asks.

“That’s
ridiculous. I did nothing of the sort. Where did you get that idea?”

“How else
could she have gotten it out of here after you stole it from Julian?”

“Aya, that’s
enough,” Haruko snaps.

Desmond holds up a
hand. “No. It’s a legitimate question. I admit, I did
have the head and the body stolen.” He pushes open a set of
swinging double doors. “But I certainly didn’t then give
the head to Mirabel.”

“You didn’t
answer my question,” Aya says.

“I have no
answer to give you,” he says, slight irritation in his tone.
“I’ve been trying to solve that mystery myself for the
better part of a year, to no avail.