Page 16 of The Other World

Then the elevator stopped and the doors opened.

It was too late to change things now. I had to just do what I could now that I was there.

The lift opened out into a concreted area, and beyond that was a dense forest. Even with my enhanced senses, it was hard to see more than a few feet into, and I wondered how I was supposed to observe anything.

“This way,” said Nikolai, heading toward a path to the left that I hadn’t noticed. I jogged to catch up with him.

“I’m sorry,” I said. There was nothing else I could say to him, now that I suspected what had happened to him.

He shook his head. “Not here,” he said. “Later.”

I glanced around and noticed even more cameras. I wouldn’t have the chance to get any more information from him at least until we got back to school.

I followed him until we came to a rope ladder hung from a giant tree. I tucked the folder into the back of my pants and climbed up. Halfway up the tree, we came to a platform. I climbed up onto it and gasped. I wasn’t sure why not-dad had given me a paper printout in that folder when this was a super high-tech setup. There were screens all around the platform, showing the parts of the forest that they looked out toward, not video but topological data. Each screen showed the heat signatures of several creatures at the edge of the forest, as well asother information that didn’t make sense to me. When I stepped closer to get a better look, I noticed that several of the heat signatures had a number assigned to them, which was obviously the test subject numbers. I quickly glanced through them to see which test subjects were possibly Sam, so that I could track him down. There were five that seemed possible, male and in the right age group. It wasmySam that I was looking for, not other-Sam, if such a person existed, so that ruled out the two human subjects as well. So that left one to the north and another two quite close together to the south-west.

Nikolai was watching me carefully, but didn’t say anything as we took our seats.

“It’s almost time,” he said, leaning forward to take the folder from me. As he did, he dropped a note into my lap.

I opened the note as secretively as I could, and as I read the note, a siren sounded deafeningly loud.

The note read: WHO ARE YOU?

CHAPTER TEN

Even after the siren ended,I couldn’t hear anything. My heart was beating so fast that all the blood rushed in my ears. Nikolai knew. He knew I was an imposter. I didn’t know what he suspected, probably not the truth, as it was such a weird and unlikely thing, but he knew something was up. And that meant I was in danger.

When I looked up at him, he was watching me with his eyes narrowed, obviously trying to gauge my reaction. I wondered how much I’d given away.

The siren was obviously meant to signal the start of whatever was about to happen. The dots on the screens, the test subjects, started to move. I watched as they entered the forest, running in different directions. I wondered if they knew what was happening or if they just thought it was a chance to escape. Silently, I urged them on, wanting them to move faster, beyond the borders of the screens I was watching, beyond the borders of this forest. I wanted them to break free before those tests could begin.

I had no clue what would happen next, or how not-dad would test all the awful things in that folder. But it didn’t take me long to find out.

First a blanket of water dropped from the sky. Not like rain, but more like a giant bucket being tipped out, so big that it covered the entire area. Luckily for us, the little platform was covered, because after a moment I heard screams, and a few of the heat signatures blinked out. Nikolai made some notes in the folder.

Without thinking, I jumped up from my seat and scanned the screens to make sure that the possible Sams were still there. I remembered the test subject numbers, 322 to the north, 592 and 721 to the southwest. I breathed out a sigh of relief and sank back into my seat when I noticed they were still there. But that was just the first test, there were still hours to go. How long had Sam even been out here? How often did they do these tests? How did any of them ever survive? I couldn’t think about that or I’d start to panic and then I’d be good for nothing.

It went on like that for the next ten minutes. There would be a few minutes break, then something was released, a few of the subjects would blink out and Nikolai would make notes. After the third time, I couldn’t stand it any more. I couldn’t keep sitting there. They were people, not just lights on a screen, I had to do something to help.

I stood, but Nikolai caught me by the wrist.

“What do you think you can do?” he said quietly, still looking down at the paper he was making notes on. He scribbled something furiously and I looked at what he was writing.

“DON’T LET HIM KNOW WHAT YOU ARE”

“What?” I said, stupidly.

He kept writing. “WHATEVER YOU ARE. HE WILL HURT YOU.”

“I know,” I said. “I don’t care.”

But as the siren sounded again for another test, I slumped back into my chair. I couldn’t help Sam if my own light blinked out. I needed to be smart about this.

“Okay,” I said, when the next test was over and the possible Sams were still okay. I had to think. There was one advantage I had over this not-dad. He didn’t know me. He didn’t know what I was good at. And I was good at tech. Maybe I hadn’t been so focused on it recently, on account of all the crazy magic stuff, but I’d done some tinkering over the summer, out of boredom, some light hacking. I still knew my way around, enough to get those cameras offline at least, and then I could have a conversation with Nikolai and find out what he knew. Since my cover was blown anyway, all bets were off.

I pushed my chair over to the closest keyboard and started typing.

“What are you doing?” Nikolai hissed at me, but I ignored him. I needed to concentrate. I was reasonably sure the systems would work the same in this universe but I had to be super focused in case they didn’t. I only had one chance at this, as soon as not-dad realized what I was doing, he’d be all over us.

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