Page 32 of The Other World

“It’s fine,” I said. “Go take care of Sam.”

Once I was alone on the ladder, I could hear the dripping more clearly than ever. Or rather, I could hearthroughthe dripping. I didn’t need to make out its words or language, I could hear directly into the meaning of it. And it was calling to me. I knew where I had to go to find the lodestone, and I knew that once I found it, I’d know what to do next. It was just an absolute certainty, something that didn’t need to be explained, like breathing or sleeping.

I let go of the ladder and allowed myself to fall.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Rather than droplike a lead weight and splatter on the ground, I floated. It was as if my body realized it didn’t actually exist in this world and decided to behave accordingly. I still fell, but it was more like falling through water than air. As I fell, I closed my eyes. It was the same as when I walked through the walls – there was no real reason to close my eyes, but it made it easier to suspend my disbelief if I couldn’t see what was happening. Iknewthat when I landed, wherever that may be, would be where I could access the lodestone, but it felt as if there was an element of belief to what was happening, as if I had to somehow know I could do this in order to be able to. And it was far easier to believe something impossible if you didn’t have to see it.

When I hit the ground, it was quite gentle and I was standing upright, as if I’d merely jumped from the bottom rung of the ladder. I clearly hadn’t, because I was in a different room entirely. At a guess, I’d say it was a room somewhere below the dungeons, and I’d fallen directly down, through the floor to it, though really I could’ve been anywhere. It was a dark room, lined with shelves that were stacked with bottles and jars, almostlike some old lady’s pickle cellar. I couldn’t tell where the light was coming from, but it was that same sickly green light that had been in the dungeons, which made the glass from the jars glow eerily.

I wasn’t sure if the lodestone was in that exact room but the dripping was so loud now it wasn’t a distinct sound, more like just a high-pitched humming that did no favors to my badly battered head. I knew the only way to stop the sound was to find the lodestone, so I couldn’t avoid it, I had to follow the noise to wherever it was the loudest.

The shelves were stacked haphazardly, and from floor to ceiling, so trying to navigate around them was like trying to find the center of a very creepy maze.

I didn’t look too closely at the jars, afraid of what I might see. The whole place had the vibe of a mad scientist lab, so the pickle jars were probably full of misshapen body parts or something, and I didn’t even want to think about it. I just had to get the lodestone and get out of there.

Which was easier said than done. The storeroom seemed to go on forever. Every time I felt as though I was getting closer, I’d hit a dead end. Sure, I could probably walk through the shelves, just as easily as walking through a wall, but the thought of what might be in the jars, of what I might be walkingthroughstopped me.

Eventually the noise got so loud, I thought I might go mad. I couldn’t even cover my ears, because the sound came from inside my head. It almost seemed as if it would be worth it to knock myself out just to get away from the sound, but just as I was seriously thinking about it, I stumbled onto the lodestone.

Literally. It was sticking up out of the ground. Which, if they were trying to hide it, was kind of stupid, and if they weren’t, was still a definite occupational health and safety issue.

I stared down at it. It was a fairly normal-looking stone, around the size of my fist, and it looked to be well lodged into the ground. It was almost as if the floor had been built around it, rather than the stone set into the floor, but that couldn’t be possible. The stone had been stolen from Vucari’s people, he’d said. Who’d go to all that trouble just to leave it wedged into the floor of some creepyass basement.

I sighed. I hadn’t brought a pickaxe along, or anything useful in disembedding a rock from a floor, but when I bent down to touch the stone, it came away quite easily. I picked it up and put it in my pocket.

As I turned to leave, something moved behind me. I blinked and shook my head, thinking it was just a mirror but then I realized it was a person. A person who looked exactly like me. I hadn’t heard her because the stone had been so noisy but she must have been following me through the room. I wasn’t sure why she hadn’t spoken up sooner and I didn’t get a chance to ask, because she picked up one of the gross jars and whacked me over the head with it.

I groaned and sat up, back in the real world. The jar must have shattered because my face and arms were covered in cuts, and I could feel a painful lump forming on my head.

“Honestly,” I said. “There’s no way I’m getting out of this without a brain injury.”

I looked around, and realized I wasn’t back in my world after all. I was in one of the cells in my not-dad’s dungeon. Not one of the cells like Sam had been in though, this was a room for experimenting. It wasn’t big and fancy like the room with the viewing platform, it was more like where my real dad had performed his earlier experiments on me. The equipment seemed rudimentary and none too clean, with only enough room for one test subject.

And that’s what I was. I wasn’t exactly strapped to a table, but my ankles were shackled and chained to the bench I sat on.

“So,” I said. “This is… not wholly unexpected.”

Other-me glanced over from where she was filling a syringe with something green and sludgy.

“I’m not going to monologue all my plans to you, if that’s what you’re hoping,” she said, setting the syringe aside and putting the lid back on the jar of green and sludgy stuff.

I shrugged. “Whatever. You know I can walk through walls, right? Do you really think these shackles are going to keep me here while you, what, drain me of my powers?”

Her face ticked. That was what she had planned then.

“That’s what your father’s doing, right? Draining all these people of their powers, maybe trying to transplant some of them? How many has he stolen for himself? How many lives has he stolen to power his ambitions?”

She raised her eyebrows and flicked off her rubber gloves. “Is that what your father is doing, in your world?” She stopped to consider for a moment. “Is that actually possible?”

I shrugged, not wanting to give her, or her evil father ideas.

“I realized something earlier today,” she said, resting back against the workbench. “When I intercepted your psychic communication with that werewolf. You see, I’d thought we merely looked the same, an accident of genetics that led to us having the same ancestry in a different world, but when I could hear his thoughts meant for you, and I noticed that his counterpart could hear your thoughts for him, I realized I was wrong. There’s some sort of connection between us, between each of the counterparts, I’d hazard. Which gives me an advantage that my father lacks in his work. A direct link between myself and my subject.”

She turned her back and began messing with something on the workbench. While she was distracted, I tried to spirit myway out of the shackles but it was much harder than just brain-walking through a wall. Maybe because it was a smaller target? Maybe I needed to concentrate more?

“I never believed in a soul before, or spirit, anything like that,” she said. “So, you can imagine my ontological shock when I realized I was wrong. There was no other logical explanation for that connection, not that my work hasn’t already disproven. I was completely thrown at the idea, but I think I’ve done well with only these few hours to plan.” She glanced back over her shoulder at me. “Those shackles have wards to inhibit your powers. This isn’t my first rodeo, you know.”

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