“Bishop,” I say, “give Opkick to someone else. I need you up front with me.”
O’Malley glances my way, a sour expression on his face. He doesn’t like that I want Bishop up front, but that’s stupid—Bishop is the biggest and strongest of us, of course he should be the first through.
Bishop joins me at the door. El-Saffani is at his sides. The twins came without being asked. Where Bishop goes, they go.
I look back to Spingate.
“Open it,” I say to her.
She nods rapidly, excited at this new puzzle she must solve. She brushes dust off the metal frame, exposing embedded jewels. She studies the archway for a moment. I see her lips moving. She starts pressing blue jewels. She shakes her head—she got it wrong.
Gaston joins her. He points at a pair of yellow jewels. Spingate nods, presses them. Then she presses a green one: a hidden panel pops open.
Inside the panel, two dark holes.
She looks at me, asking for permission, as always.
I glance at Bishop. I have a connection with him that isn’t there with O’Malley. I can’t explain it. It’s something I feel in my stomach, in my bones. O’Malley is smart, he helps me keep things organized and calm, but Bishop is like me in one key way: he wants to lead. He and I are willing to make decisions and take responsibility for them.
Bishop grins at me. Perhaps behind this door is the adventure he seeks.
He’s ready.
So am I.
I nod at Spingate. “Open it up.”
She slides the scepter’s prongs into the holes. They click home. She lifts.
The hall groans and shakes.
With a grinding sound so loud some people cover their ears, the stone doors begin to shudder.
SIXTEEN
The doors slide open a crack, then stop. Hot, humid air billows out. So does a stench, something rich and awful.
Spingate runs to me.
“Em, the air is damp. That means there might be water in there!”
I nod. I’m not sure if she thinks I’m stupid, or she says whatever crosses her mind no matter how obvious it might be.
The doors slowly slide wider.
It’s dark inside, pitch-black, the hallway’s light creating a widening rectangle of brightness on the floor beyond.
For a moment, I hope I am seeing an illusion, or that my eyes are playing tricks on me. I want to see grass and trees. I want to see the outside. What I want doesn’t matter though: reality is what it is, and the reality I see before me is just another room.
Little Gaston’s face wrinkles up. He waves a hand in front of his nose.
“Oh, that’s awful. Bishop, if you’re going to fart, couldn’t you at least walk to the other end of the hall?”
Bishop turns toward him. Gaston melts away again. Snarling, Bishop goes to give chase, but I grab his arm.
“Stay with me,” I say. “We don’t know what might come out of there.”
His pale face flushes. He knew better than to let Gaston get to him at a time like this. Bishop steps to the widening space between the doors, his knees bent, his hands out in front of him and ready to take on any danger.
I hear kids moaning from the smell pouring out of the room. I think I know that odor, something from school…I wish I could remember. If I ever find the people who made us forget everything, I swear to Tlaloc, I will stab them all.
Tlaloc? Who is Tlaloc? That’s a name, like Tchaikovsky was a name, but I don’t think Tlaloc is a musician. I don’t know who it is, but at least the name gives me a bit of hope that maybe my memories will come back.
The heavy doors are halfway open when the right one grinds and slows. It starts to shudder up and down, the floor bouncing under our feet each time it descends. Then it lurches and comes to a stop with an ear-splitting crunch.
The left door keeps going. It slides all the way into the wall, making the hallway vibrate one final time.
The right door, obviously broken, tilts away from us at a slight angle. The area beyond the opening is completely dark except for the hallway’s light, which plays off a hard floor littered with bits of metal and streaked with some kind of dirty grime.
O’Malley leans close to me.
“Em, what do we do?”
We can either turn around and leave, or we can enter a dark, stinky room so humid that just standing outside of it is already making me sweat. But like Latu said, I’m not going back.
“We need light,” I say. I turn to Spingate. “Any ideas?”
She clutches the scepter in both hands, holding it to her chest. She shakes her head.
Bishop silently steps into the dark room, El-Saffani at his sides. It annoys me he went without my say-so, but only a little.
The metal bits are springs, bars both round and flat, screws and nails and random pieces that used to be part of who knows what. Hanging down from somewhere above the archway, I see white cloth—banners of some kind, perhaps?
Gaston steps in front of Spingate and faces her. He’s staring at…is he staring at her breasts? Spingate notices it, too—her cheeks redden and she looks at me, silently asking me to do something about it.