I move back from the glass. The others do, too. It takes a step closer. Tilts its head. “Go,” I say, and it hears, and we’re running, our feet like gunshots against the floor. The mirrors seem to fan out on all sides, multiplying us a million times. A black shape cuts across our reflections.
“Run!” I shout. “Into the corridor!” I don’t know where it goes, but we can’t get lost in this maze. I slip around one of the glass panels and sprint forward. The corridor shears away in front of me, disappearing into a point. I glance over my shoulder, get a brief impression of the group, Miss Sei in front, marching toward us. They’re not running. It’s like they already know they have us, like we don’t have a chance. There seem to be hundreds of them, mirrored over and over again, an army of doppelgangers.
Miss Sei raises a hand, shouts something, a vicious spike of a syllable.
I face forward again––
A helmet figure is right in front of me. I swing under its arm as it tries to grab me. Will hits it a second later, body slamming it against the wall. I hear glass splinter.
“Where do we go?” Lilly screams.
I have no idea. They’re moving faster now, passing Miss Sei. I hear their boots pounding the floor.
We’re nearing the end of the corridor. Up ahead is a massive door, like a bank vault. A huge circle of dull blue metal. It’s slightly ajar.
“Come on!” I yell. “Get through the door and close it!”
Another glance over the shoulder: Will has disentangled himself from the helmet thing, is stumbling into a run. Further back, the other helmet things are searing down the corridor, their arms chopping the air. Their speed is incredible, inhuman. Miss Sei is holding a gun now. It’s pointing directly at me.
I reach the door and slip through the gap.
“Get in!” I scream. “Come on!”
I hear a shot, the ping of a bullet glancing off metal.
Jules and Lilly dart through, start heaving against the door. Will and I grab the edge, our fingers straining. The hinges are oiled, slick as silk, but the door weighs a ton. We throw ourselves against it.
“Don’t!” Miss Sei shouts, and now her voice is different, scared.
Out in the corridor, one of the helmet figures pulls ahead of the rest. It’s freakishly close, speeding toward us. I see its visor through the narrowing crack, a curved pane of night, the slice of red light throbbing like a wound along its jaw. Black fingers curl toward me, ready to grip my face, crush my skull.
Miss Sei screams, “Don’t!” one last time, shrill and desperate.
The door slams into place, and I jam the bar home.
We’re in a hall. Huge and cavernous, a cathedral of shadows. Lilly and Jules are racing into it. And now I’m spinning back to the door, scrabbling with the other bolts. They’re solid steel, radiating out of the center of the door, locking it into the wall. Three, four, five . . . Will and I slam them into place. I collapse against the metal, gasping.
There’s no other sound. Nothing from the other side of the door. Nothing in this vast new space. The silence presses around me like an actual weight, solid and icy.
I raise my head. Jules and Lilly have stopped about twenty paces in. I can’t see a light source, but somehow it’s not pitch-black. The walls are marble, black and green. They remind me of some sort of digestive organ, darkly translucent, veins pulsing just below the surface. The ceiling is a vault of gilt and crystal. I still have Lilly’s key-chain light and I raise it, flicking it across the expanse. It catches on golden leaves, marble hands. Portraits and mirrors glimmer, chairs and Chinese-style vases twice as tall as a person. It’s the most enormous space I’ve ever been in, like it was built for giants.
I let my breath out slowly. “Jules?” I call out weakly. “Lilly, wait.”
I start toward them, tripping all over myself. Jules has his hands tangled in his hair. He’s bobbing around like he can’t decide between throwing up and staring around in awe. Lilly is sobbing, “Wow” over and over again. “Wow.”
I glance down. The floor is a huge mural, fitted together out of thousands of marble tiles. Enormous wings. Human eyes.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
I reach Jules and Lilly. “They’re going to kill us,” Lilly whispers. She looks at me beseechingly, her face streaked with tears. “They’re insane, they—”
I’m not listening. My brain is spinning, twisting into single thread of thought. This is the Palais du Papillon. It’s not lost. It’s right here and it has a very twenty-first-century vault door and fluorescent-lit glass corridors. They were lying from the moment they contacted us—
Out of the corner of my eye I see Will moving toward us. He’s favoring one side of his body, limping slightly.
“What about the expedition?” Lilly sobs. “What about all our prep? We were supposed to pick up our gear by 9 A.M.—”
“Lilly, there is no expedition,” I snap. “Don’t you get it? They drugged us. They tricked us into coming here. We just barely escaped being murdered, okay?”