Page 37 of The Other World

“Nice one,” I told Mrs Spencer, as she shook my fake finger at me.

I moved to not-dad’s computer and opened up the security system. I clicked through the different buildings, until I got to the prison. All of the cells were unlocked, which I took to mean we wouldn’t find Althea and Nikolai there. I glanced over to other-Nikolai, who was looking at the screen with a furrowed brow.

“Maybe they’ve escaped,” he said.

“Or maybe she’s got them in her secret laboratory,” I said.

“Or her father does,” said Mrs Spencer.

“This speculation doesn’t help us,” said Tennyson. “I can find Althea and Nikolai through the pack bond, but that won’t help us with the sword.”

“So, it’s plan B then,” I said.

Plan B was to lure out Other-me using our telepathic connection as bait. If she knew I was there, she wouldn’t be able to resist a chance to resume her experiments.

Tennyson nodded. “We’ll get everyone else out first,” he said. “Then you and I will get the sword. Nikolai, can we trust you here with the portal?”

He nodded and took the fake finger from Mrs Spencer.

“If I ever find out you’ve done something creepy with that,” I told him.

He laughed. “You won’t find out.”

I poked my tongue out at him and the three of us left. I really hoped he didn’t double-cross us.

We followed Tennyson down the stairwell, not trusting the elevator. Even though I knew his pack bond would lead him right to Althea and Nikolai, it wouldn’t take into account the maze-like layout of this place, and it wouldn’t lead him to other-Tennyson either. I hoped we’d be able to get everyone out, but with every step I took, I fought down panic. It seemed like every time we came to this place, we just made things worse for ourselves.

We found Nikolai so easily that I was sure it was a trap. He was locked up, yes, but the room was quite nice and he was fast asleep in an extremely comfortable-looking bed.

Tennyson kicked the door in easily, which I had to admit, was a little bit hot.

Nikolai jumped up, startled, but relaxed when he saw it was us. “Finally,” he said. “I was starting to think you’d forgotten me.”

“Do you know where they’re keeping Althea?” Tennyson asked, easily breaking the bed leg that Nikolai was chained to. He was really tapping into his caveman side. Even though it was hot, it wasn’t like him.

Nikolai put on his shoes, tucking the end of the chain into his sock on the side that still had the manacle around it. “Nope. They still think I’m the other one, so they just shoved meinto one of the guest rooms and forgot about me. They tried questioning me, but I just played dumb.”

I snorted. “You weren’t playing.”

It still reeked of a trap to me, so we moved even more cautiously as we left that room and continued the hunt for Althea. A couple of times we almost ran into some guards but managed to duck out of sight before they saw us.

Tennyson led us down more stairs, down, down, until we were even deeper underground than Other-me’s creepy lab, or that creepy storeroom. This far underground, the walls were just packed dirt, basically just tunnels carved into the earth, with some strip lights running along the ceiling. Occasionally, the tunnels would diverge but Tennyson never hesitated about which direction to turn. There were no doors or rooms off the tunnels and the further we went, the more I started to get a bad feeling.

“This doesn’t seem right,” I said to Tennyson, as we turned down another tunnel, one that veered sharply downhill.

“We’re close,” he said. He had a glassy look in his eyes, as if his mind was far away somewhere. It didn’t reassure me.

Nikolai and I exchanged a worried look, but Mrs Spencer didn’t seem bothered. Somehow, that worried me even more.

We turned another corner and came to a dead end.

“What?” Tennyson said, looking around confusedly.

“The tunnels wind all around,” I said. “Maybe we should backtrack and see if there’s another way through.”

Tennyson stared angrily at the wall of dirt in front of us, and then he began to dig at the dirt with his bare hands.

“Tennyson, stop!” I told him, trying to grab hold of his arms. There was something wrong with him. I’d known it but I’d thought he was just worried for his sister, but this was something else entirely. “Come on, let’s just go back.”

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