The meal was unremarkable—a bowl of unidentifiable instant noodles, still steaming hot. There were also some peanut butter-smeared crackers and a glass of milk. She took the convenience-store style meals as a sign that the Cerberus headquarters was not a large-scale operation. A fully-prepared meal would have indicated an onsite kitchen, maybe a cafeteria for guards and other personnel. Of course, it was also possible that her captors had merely elected not to waste good food on a doomed prisoner, but she tried not to think about that.
She ate methodically, staring at the walls and biding her time. The food was not the worst thing she’d ever eaten, and it would provide metabolic fuel for what she was about to do. The supply of insulin in her pump would not last forever—another twelve hours if she was lucky. And she wasn’t about to beg her captors for more, which meant that she had to succeed. If things went badly, it would probably be her last meal.
When she had siphoned the last drops of milk from the glass, she rose and carried the tray back to the door, kneeling to set it down with as much nonchalance as she could manage. Then, as she stood, she took hold of the plastic fork and gave the door a gentle tug.
As it swung open she braced herself for an alarm, expecting to be met by an armed guard, maybe even the big ugly giant, Rohn. Nothing happened. The door opened without any resistance, granting her a view of the hallway beyond. She took a cautious step forward, peering around the doorjamb, looking both ways.
No one there.
The hallway looked like something from a budget motel, except the doors on either side were unmarked and there were no signs to guide her toward an exit. There was what appeared to be an elevator door to her right, and further away to the left, a dead-end, or possibly a T-intersection; she couldn’t be sure which.
Elevator, she decided, though she was by no means confident in the choice.
The quiet was unnerving. No noise of outside traffic, televisions or vacuum cleaners. Either the walls were heavily insulated or she was alone on the floor. If not for her earlier meal delivery, she would have believed that the building had been abandoned.
Her curiosity got the better of her, and she tried the doorknob of the first room she came to. Locked. She pressed her ear to the door and listened, but the room was as quiet as a tomb. She kept moving.
When she reached the elevator door, she was confronted with a new problem. There was no call button. No way to summon the car or open the doors.
The predicament reminded her of being stuck in the Labyrinth, and that made her think about the inscription on Queen Hippolyte’s map-belt. She might not be able to decipher the Mother Tongue, but she recognized the words. They were the same words she had seen at the dead end in the Labyrinth, just before Kenner’s bomb had blown the whole place to Hell. If they meant what she thought they did, saying them correctly would have let her and Pierce walk right through that wall. There had actually been a few seconds where she thought she had gotten the words right, but it could have been her imagination.
Could she do the same thing now?
She tried to visualize the words, picturing them engraved on the blank metal door. The letters were no longer just unfamiliar squiggles to her, but comprehension remained just beyond her grasp.
Suddenly, the door slid open.
She jumped back, startled. Her heart pounded in her chest, each beat sending a tremor through her entire body. She was about to turn and flee, even though there was nowhere to go, but before she could make another move, she realized that the car was empty. A moment later, the door closed.
“Okay, what just happened?” she muttered.
For a fleeting instant, she wondered if she had caused the door to open, perhaps merely by focusing on the Mother Tongue, but then a different thought occurred to her. She took a step toward the elevator, and it opened again.
A proximity sensor, just like a supermarket door.
She stuck her head into the car and looked around. There was no control panel, no way to select a destination.
If the doors were programmed to respond to someone getting close, maybe the elevator would automatically take her somewhere else. But where?
Only one way to find out. It was not like she had a wide range of choices.
She stepped in. The doors closed, and there was a vibration as the car began to move. She couldn’t tell if it was moving up or down, but thirty seconds later, the sensation stopped. The elevator opened again.
She peeked around the door frame, but there was no one lurking in the hall beyond. She stepped out.
The corridor was so like the one she had just left that Fiona wondered if the elevator had actually moved at all—blank walls, blank doors, no signs. As she moved down the hallway, she tested doors at random. None opened, but she did see one distinctive difference between this floor of the building and the one where her prison cell had been located. There was a door at the far end, wooden and stained a dark walnut. There was no doorknob, but as she got close, the door swung inward.