Behind the cases, the wallpaper shimmers royal blue, studded every few yards with silver wall sconces. Dark, heavily carved wooden beams rise to the ceiling, twining overhead like branches. Between them, in alcoves or hanging on the walls are sculptures, portraits, still lifes.
I pause, leaning down next to one of the displays. Inside is an antique pendulum clock. The face is alabaster, the color of bad teeth, cut so thin I can see the tangle of gears and sprockets behind it. It looks ancient. Seventeenth century at least. The next case holds a wire-spewing device that I think is a telegram machine. Then an old telephone. I get excited for a second, wonder if we could use it to call someone. Nope. The cable snaking out of its base is rolled up and zip-tied. I highly doubt we’ll find a hookup to a landline down here.
The displays seem to be organized chronologically, by type. I’m in front of weapons now. Some weird, medieval-looking stone cannon. Now flintlocks. Revolvers. I stop in front of an ammunition shell. Blunt, dark metal with a brassy tip—the kind they shot in the First World War when the whole “‘noble heroes’” illusion broke down and it was all bloody tussles in trenches, corpses stuck in the mud, and gas masks.
I squint at the little brass plaque below the box.
First mass-produced shrapnel shell, 1912, by H. B.
Like it’s a work of art. Like it’s something beautiful, not something that eviscerated people in bursts of fire, something some human designed to destroy other humans.
I turn and stare down the row of glass cases. My heart does a clumsy, reverberating beat. From here on it’s all weapons. Grenades. Missiles. Guns poised on tripods, like spiny black insects.
Seriously?
Lilly’s ahead of me, inspecting an exhibit of bright red canisters stamped with biohazard symbols. “By H.B,” she reads out loud, and cuts her eyes toward me.
“This one’s marked with insignias,” Jules says from the other side of the hall. “Red Army, Khmer.”
I start walking again. The guns stare out, lifeless but still somehow watchful, and I imagine one of those black-eyed barrels winking suddenly, a bullet ripping through me––
“This is their stuff,” I say. “Their hall of fame or something. Maybe they invented all this stuff.”
“That would explain why they’re so rich,” Lilly says, crossing to the other side of the gallery. “If they’re weapons manufacturers. I mean, you’re never going to go out of business that way.”
I pass Will, standing in front of a case of bullets, frowning at them.
“You know what’s funny?” Jules calls over his shoulder. He’s in front of what looks like a giant iron sea urchin. “Those blue folders we got. All that stuff about parts of the palace maybe being underwater, that we might have to dive, that they had no clue how big this place was, yadda yadda. They knew exactly what was down here. We were never supposed to live long enough to see any of it.”
“But we believed them,” I say as I pass him.
We barely even questioned anything until it was too late. We saw their snazzy names, looked up their snazzy websites. It was all just paper and Internet stuff, stuff that’s so easy to fake and lie about.
Selective Perception n.—The tendency to disregard or more quickly forget stimuli that causes emotional discomfort or contradicts prior beliefs.
Aka, if you don’t want to see it you won’t.
I can’t even fathom myself from twenty-four hours ago. I was so busy following my rotten little heart Disney princess–style, and look where it got me.
I slow down, because the others are still milling around the weapons. I wish they’d hurry up. “If we get out of here, these people are done for,” Lilly’s saying. “Can you imagine the court cases? I mean, even if we don’t get out, something’s going to happen. Our parents will go to the cops.”
Something about Lilly’s words gives me a sinking feeling. She’s still banking on her parents, still thinks they might rescue us, like a little kid jumping blindly, sure she’s going to be caught. And it’s not just because I’m bitter and my parents don’t have a clue where I am, and if they knew they would probably be planning a celebratory lobster brunch right now. Down here, in this huge, fake, beautiful alternate universe, words like “‘cops”‘ and “‘court cases”‘ sound ridiculous. The Sapanis flew us on a private jet out of JFK. They marched us over international borders without us ever showing our passports. I doubt they care at all about cops and court cases.