“Paranoia isnota luxury we can afford right now, Levana. We have a job to do,” Erith said, and I thought,paranoia is not a luxury,in my father’s voice.It’s a tool,he used to say—except right now it didn’t really feel like it.
“This way,” Russ said, taking the lead when we made it through the second door, too. By now a part of me expected to be caught or seen or running from someone at the very least, but the walls were so quiet still.
Every single hallway and corridor we passed was quiet, but we still took our time to get to the kitchen. We still checked every corner, stopped and held our breaths and waited every few feet, but nobody came.
We went right through the kitchen doors to find it exactly as we’d left it. The islands, the fridges, the cabinets lining the walls, the appliances—it was all identical, yet the feel of the room was different.Darker.Like nobody had set foot in this place in ages, yet every surface was clean and shiny, possibly just polished in the last few hours.
“This way,” Russ repeated and went straight for a piece of empty wall between the appliances that didn’t look like anything at all—just a white wall. My mouth opened to tell him there was nothing there, as therewasn’t,but then he went and pressed his hand right on the side of it just once.
A click.
I could hardly believe my eyes when the wall moved back an inch.
Russ turned to us, grinning a boyish grin that transformed his face completely. Arelievedgrin—like maybe he’d doubted his own self until now.
“Howdid you even know?!” Erith asked, her voice pitched high, but we were no longer concerned of being caught at the moment.
Russ shrugged, a hint of pride in his eyes. “I like to stick my nose everywhere I can. It’s fun.” Then he pushed the door open all the way and went through. “Let’s go.”
The moment he stepped onto the black tiles that made both the floor and the walls, lights went on overhead. Dim, white lights that showed the corridor had a door at the other end and nothing else in it.
“Whoa,”Levana breathed when she went in after Russ, Seth, and then Erith. I turned back once more just to make sure nobody had come into the kitchen while we’d been distracted, then slipped in and pulled the wall-door closed almost all the way.
The air was colder in the corridor, and Russ went straight for the door on the other side without bothering to check his surroundings another time, like he knew for a fact that there would be nothing there.
“I think I knew this place from…before,” he whispered. “My legs knew the way. My hands knew exactly where to touch the wall.”
“I’m so tired of that feeling,” Erith muttered.
“Me, too,” Seth said. “It’s so annoying. I can’t wait to get my memories back.”
“Open it. Let’s get this over with,” Levana said when we were in front of the door, and Russ didn’t hesitate. Hepushed the silver handle down and opened the door in the next beat—and we all stopped breathing for a second.
White.
I was falling again, floating, spiraling down a hole, looking at flashes of light, seeing a different time, but the exact same place.
Same racks, same walls, same tiles on the floor, same spotlessly clean dishes.
The white room where the White Queen had dragged the plaques was right in front of me for real.
My name was being called, and it took me a few blinks to respond. It took me a few tries to realize they were all freaked out because I’d frozen there on the threshold and I refused to acknowledge them, to breathe at all.
“I’m…I’m okay,” I whispered, but my mind was struggling to separatethenfromnow.My stomach kept twisting like the gears inside me were malfunctioning, and I had to close my eyes and focus on breathing just to make sure I didn’t throw up again.
“Is it…is thisit?” Erith asked in half a voice. “Is this the room you saw, Ora?”
I nodded and nodded, then closed my eyes again when the movement proved to be too much for my turning gut.
“Where?” Russ had stopped in the center of the wide room—impossibly big. “There’s nothing here, just these dishes. I checked.”
Somehow, I convinced myself to step inside together with Levana, to feel the shift in the air as if we’d stepped onto a different world altogether.
Levana paused two feet in. “Did you guys feel that?”
“The air?” I asked.
“I didn’t feel anything,” said Erith.
