Then I lift my palm before me and follow the string of golden light out the door of the Lost and Found.
The night is cooler than before, and a breeze rustles the leaves of a tree to my right. I reach the corner and look left, along the Main Drag. The nearest security lamp illuminates the unicorn statue as before. The others drop their cones of light on the pavement, making blurry circles of gray, while the rest of the park is black. My string of light gleams faintly up the Main Drag, swerving into the deeper shadows. If I shift my hand away from it, the string disappears, but if I direct my hand back in the right direction, it lights up again, and my palm feels a trace of weight.
Following my string, I sneak along the left sidewalk close to the storefronts. Then I cross the street through a patch of darkness and take the right sidewalk until I near the gift shop where Berg and Ian parted. The string of light runs under an unmarked door between the gift shop and a cookie bakery.
This must be VIP Portal Number Twenty-Two, I think.
When I push the door open, the string of golden light continues down a hallway toward a landing with an elevator and a staircase. I follow, and when the string veers right, toward the stairs, I descend a couple of flights to a VIP green room, barely visible by the red glow of an exit sign. A shadowy shape makes me jump before I realize it’s a pair of fake ficus trees. A sagging couch, gray with dust, is the only other furniture.
Trying the next door, I peek cautiously out to a large, quiet food court. Chairs are clustered around tables, and many still have trays, as if the evacuation twenty years ago was a spell that froze everything in its wake. A curving bank of dirty windows faces into a dark, oddly shaped void, and it takes me a second to realize it’s the underground level of the moat, now empty of water.
Spooky hallways lead off in various directions, and I scan them quickly for movement. I can’t help worrying that Berg or someone else might jump out at me. A detailed directory lists rehearsal rooms, the grand assembly, security, tech headquarters, archives, press, costumes, makeup, and future idea development. This place is huge.
I slowly wave my hand in an arc, left to right, expecting the string of light to catch on my palm again.
This is where the pathway bifurcates, Arself says. We can’t guide you any farther.
I shine my flashlight onto the floor to where a trail of scuff marks in the dust leads around the moat. I follow them to a door that is slightly ajar, and inside, I find a janitor’s closet. A faint whirring noise comes from behind a plastic curtain, and where a large sink or tub might typically be, I find instead a narrow spiral staircase leading down.
I was expecting something different, I say. Bigger. For the bodies.
There must be another entrance for them.
Yet this must be the way Berg came, and Linus must have followed. Uneasy, I aim my flashlight along the stairs and creep down. Already, I miss the guidance of Arself’s golden string. Two dozen steps down, the whirring noise grows slightly louder, and the spiral ends at a straight, narrow, stone staircase. When I reach the bottom of the next flight, I’m at a small landing with a round window, and it looks out over the vault of dreamers.
With a hitch of relief, I recognize where I am.
I’ve reached the upper ledge of the dome, the circular hallway with the eight round windows. The oculus is dark at the apex, and I can feel air pushed by a nearby vent into the vast space. When I look back behind me, the staircase is dark and indistinguishable from other warrens I saw down here before. I can’t afford to lose it, so I check my pockets for something I can use as a marker.
My fingers close on the smooth black stone Dubbs gave me. I set it in the nook of the bottom stair. Then I look more carefully down into the vault, hoping to spot Berg without being seen myself. The sleep shells, hundreds of them, are still arranged in concentric circles in the cavernous space below, but now the floor shifts with a thin layer of purple fog. A dozen scattered sleep shells have their red distress lights on.
Two dozen others have gone dark completely, and they stand out as black voids in the expanse of blue.
A wail starts up in the back of my mind. I press my fingers to my ears, but the inner lament only grows louder.
Arself! Stop! I say.
No! she says. This can’t be happening!
Anxiety barrels through me like boulders in an avalanche.
Go! she says. Get down there! Go, go, go!
I turn to race down the steps. What is it? What’s happening?
But she doesn’t answer. She’s transformed into a wordless, high-pitched keening, and it’s all I can do not to hyperventilate with her fear.
I sprint out of the twelve o’clock archway to the nearest dark sleep shell, half hoping it will simply be empty, but when I look inside, a body lies stretched out, a boy with dark hair and eyebrows. Arself howls in my mind. At my feet, the purple fog shifts silently.
“How can this be?” I whisper.
Instinctively, I push up the glass lid to get a closer look, and a noxious reek wafts out at me. It’s different from the sourness that clung to Ma and Larry, more ominous. I hold my breath. The kid’s gray skin is stretched paper-thin, and his gelled eyes are unnaturally sunken into his skull. His dry lips are slightly pulled back from his little teeth in a rotting grimace. Desperate, I inspect the line that goes into the child’s port, but I don’t know how to tell if it’s flowing right.
Close the lid! It’s no use! Arself says.
I obey her, sealing the boy back inside his coffin.
“Is he dead?” I whisper.
Of course he’s dead! she says.
“But what happened?” I say. I stare at the cadaver through the glass, bewildered and horrified. “These dreamers were alive just two days ago.”
I look around again at how many sleep shells have gone dark. It’s more than a dozen. I can see close to twenty, just from here, and the magnitude is bewildering. Nothing before ever convinced me so completely that the dreamers are alive until now, when I’ve found one dead.
It’s all my fault! Arself says. Her agonized cry starts up again.
I press my ears again and bend over with the pain of her noise in my head.
Arself, stop! I think at her. This isn’t your fault. You weren’t even here.
They died because I left!
Eyes closed, I shake my head. “You have to stop! I can’t think!”