I’M SHIVERING. There’s heavy dew on the grass. Cold drops flick up on my ankles and bare legs from my sandals as I walk across Community to the research center. I hold my arms closer around myself.
There are red and pink streaks across the sky from the early sun—dramatic slashes of color that defy rather than blend into black cloud. With the eyes of a survivor, not even a sunrise is a simple thing anymore. And what is that saying? Red sky in morning, shepherds take warning?
Freja?
Still she doesn’t answer. She’d hailed me from my sleep earlier, said she’d found something interesting in the research center, to meet her there, and then—nothing.
What could it mean?
I reach out around me as I walk, but all I find is a sleeping consciousness here and there, including in Xander’s house. He’s sound asleep. That makes me breathe easier.
Merlin is in front of the door to the research center. His eyes are wide, his fur ruffled as if he’s had a fright—his aura too. I bend to pet him, and he meows an urgent story. My misgivings multiply. What has him so freaked out?
I reach again for Freja: there’s nothing. Has something happened to her?
When I open the door, Merlin gets in my way, almost trips me up, and I have to shoo him away to go through and close it before he can follow.
I walk down the hall.
Freja?
Still she doesn’t answer, and I can’t sense her anywhere either. Unless she is deliberately blocking me—which wouldn’t make sense, since she’s the one who asked me to come. The only place I know that would stop me from sensing her at close range is the quiet room: the room Cepta put Beatriz in a while back to see if she could find a way to reach outside of it. She couldn’t, and if Beatriz couldn’t, then I’m willing to bet no one can. Could Freja be in there?
Down the hall, down some stairs, around a corner—I remember the way. The lights turn themselves on for me as I go, and switch off behind me again.
Finally I reach the hall with the quiet room, but have I taken a wrong turn? It looks different. There’s been work done on the walls or something?
I walk along the hall, and there it is, in the midst of the changes—the door to the quiet room. It’s ajar.
Freja?
Still she doesn’t answer.
I walk up to the door, push it open a bit more to look inside. It’s empty.
Then something slams into me from behind and pushes me into the room.
I sprawl on the floor, scramble up, turn, rush to the door—
It bangs shut.