Page 20 of The Other World

I wasn’t sure if lycanthropy worked the same way in this world, but if so, he’d be able to sense where Althea was, at least. I followed Tennyson, who led us along the corridor and down several flights of stairs. The light in the stairwell was a sickly green and it smelled like decomposing meat, so we hurried down the stairs as fast as we could.

When we got to the bottom of the stairs, there was another of those big doors with only a sensor to open it, so I brain-walked through it again. I wanted to keep my eyes open this time, but chickened out at the last minute, thinking I’d probably just hit the solid door if I could see it. That was definitely something I’d have to work up to.

The next floor down was even darker and more labyrinthine than the upper floor had been, to the point we were blindly following Tennyson. It crossed my mind that he might double-cross us somehow, but I just couldn’t believe it, not of him.

I had a vague sense of the doorways we passed having people behind them, without really thinking about who it might be, but as we turned yet another corner, down another hallway, something stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t anything to do with my powers, but somehow, I just knew.

“He’s in here,” I said, and without waiting to see if I was right, I closed my eyes and walked through the door and into the cell.

Even though I’d known Sam was in there, I was still shocked to see him. Not as shocked as he was to see me though. He scrambled back into the corner and started yelling hoarsely.

“Sam, it’s me,” I said softly, trying to approach him without spooking him any more than he already was. “It’s Lucy, your Lucy.”

He stopped yelling, but he looked terrified. In the darkness, he was all big, frightened eyes. I reached out and tried to touch his hand but he pulled it out of reach.

“I’m here to help you,” I told him. “I’m here to take you home.”

At that, he seemed to calm a little.

“No,” he said firmly. “You shouldn’t be here.”

I shook my head. “You don’t understand, Sam–”

“No,youdon’t understand, Lucy,” he said, more coldly than I’d ever heard him speak. “Get out! Leave me alone!”

I had so many questions for him, arguments to make to him, but before I could speak again, an alarm started blaring all around him.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I wasn’table to open Sam’s cell from the inside, so I had to brain-walk back through the door, leaving him behind. Back in the corridor, the others had all fled, except for Nikolai and Tennyson, and even they were cowering. The alarms were so loud, they seemed to incapacitate us. I supposed they were designed specifically to work against supernatural creatures, like the lights in the corridor had been. The lights of the alarm were something else as well, flashing red and blue at a seizure-inducing rate. I knew I was probably less susceptible than the others, due to not being particularly one thing or the other, and even I wanted to curl up into a little ball at the assault on my senses.

“His sister,” Nikolai croaked, tugging my arm to follow Tennyson.

Tennyson loped along, hunched over and almost walking on all fours. It was so strange to see him act in such an animalistic way, nothing like my Tennyson at all, really. And yet, at the core he was the same, still valuing the people he cared about over anything else.

We hadn’t gotten far before we heard footsteps behind us. It was impossible to tell if it was guards or the other prisoners who had fled when the alarm sounded, and we couldn’t risk stopping to find out. At the sound of them, we ran faster, racing through the corridors so fast I thought my lungs would burst. Finally, Tennyson stopped, resting his clawed hand against a door.

I didn’t hesitate before closing my eyes and walking through the solid door and into Althea’s cell.

“You!” she said, shrinking back into the corner of the room when she saw me. She was so unlike my Althea that if I hadn’t known it was her, I wouldn’t have guessed. Her hair was chopped short, close to her scalp and patchy. My Althea was willowy, this one was gaunt, her cheeks so hollow she almost looked like a skeleton. She was wearing oversized sweatpants and a t-shirt, both so dirty I couldn’t tell the color, and she had clearly not washed in a long, long time. Even more than seeing Tennyson in the state he was in, this made my heart ache. She looked absolutely defeated.

“Nope,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. “Different me. I don’t have time to explain but I’m here with Tennyson.”

She gasped. “He’s alive?” A tiny spark seemed to return to her eyes.

I nodded. “Do you know how I can get this door open?”

She got up and walked over to the sensor by the door, smashing it with one swift punch. She pulled the cover off and took out a bunch of different colored wires and started stripping them and twisting different ones together.

“You could do that this whole time?” I asked, wondering why she hadn’t already escaped.

She shrugged. “What would be the point?”

The door beeped and slid open before I could even think of a suitable comment to that.

Tennyson pounced on Althea as soon as the door opened enough for him to get at her.

“Come on, you big idiot,” she said, pulling away from him with a tiny smile. “We have to get out of here.”

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