Page 46 of Strange Lights

“We should get Eldi and run,” Calvin mutters. But to my relief, he only quietly swears and follows me instead of arguing.

I know where I’m going. I still remember this place by heart, and I make turns and slip through doors, Calvin at my heels. The base is quieter than it should be. Maybe most of the personnel have been drawn toward whatever situation Dave is creating, but I don’t like it. It feels too deliberate.

“Stay here; watch the door,” I say to Calvin as I duck into a room filled with bright terminals and the quiet buzz of computer cooling fans.

“Reggie, I don’t like this,” Calvin hisses. “Let’s go get Eldi and leave.”

“Watch the door,” I bark, and he curses but stays, his back to me, his eyes on the corridor.

This will undoubtedly tell them I was here, as I log in with my old credentials. But hopefully not until we’re gone. I’m beginning to think this is a game, a power play, a message that I am nothing to be worried about. I’m not sure I care anymore⁠—being here has rekindled a reckless and long-burning anger within me.

What I find on the computer makes my stomach drop. Readily accessible information. I don’t have to look for long. It’s like she wants me to investigate. Files on creatures like Eldi all across the world. Neatly labeled folders filled with pictures, video surveillance, reports. “Deceased,” “Missing,” “Unknown,” “Acquired,” “Failed/Terminated”; they’re all tagged. I skim the information as quickly as possible. Some are labeled as children, others as various animal species, and still more are classified as unknown.

A sullen black-haired teenager appears in a security camera still with a backpack slung over their shoulder, lips pulled back in a growl full of sharp teeth. There’s a video clip, taken from some sort of body camera, of a girl who doesn’t appear to be more than a year or two older than Eldi, with wide, frightened eyes. I can’t play the sound, but someone’s trying to shield her; someone is pushing into the frame to shove away whoever is taking the video. A screenshot from a humane society adoption website features a strange-looking cat with human eyes and odd protrusions along its spine. A blurry photograph taken with a trail camera shows a silvery snout and reflective eyes peering out of the brush. There are even names I recognize: Calvin’s cousin and his daughter.

“Reggie, come on,” Calvin whispers loudly from the door.

I raise my hand to speak to Eldi’s watch on a desperate hunch. “If you know how to steal this information somehow and take it with us,” I say into it, “now would be the time.”

It pulls a very Doug and Dave move, flicking out a silvery string of an appendage, latching right onto the computer, and pulsing with light. It’s like a little straw drinking up knowledge.

“Hurry,” Calvin says shortly.

“I know, but what I found was worth it.” I can only hope this will prove true and I didn’t just lose us our chance to rescue Eldi and escape.

The watch buzzes in quick succession⁠—our warning sign we’re running out of time. I’m flat-out sprinting as we reach the dizzying spiral of staircases that leads down to the dungeon. The air grows cool and artificial tasting in my throat the deeper we go. It’s stale and wet, like something left to rot. The lighting dims, too, to a pale reddish orange⁠—artificial lighting meant to evoke the feeling of slipping into a timeless, liminal horror space. There’s no lock on the outer door. Why would there need to be when everything that stays down here is put in a cage?

There’s a little table in front of the cells. On it lies something that looks like a piece of jewelry, a choker-length piece of silver metal. Its design is simple, beautifully austere rather than ornate⁠—a taunt, a message for me.

I start to hyperventilate. Calvin looks at me in alarm.

The sound of singing takes me back a decade in a single instant.

“Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home.”

Something is wrong. I’ve made a mistake. This wasn’t about Eldi. At least, it was never all about Eldi; she was a bonus. I was the objective. This was always a trap for me, not Eldi.

“Ladybird, ladybird, your house is on fire and your children are gone.”

A voice that’s hauntingly familiar echoes around the dungeon, a voice I last heard ten years ago, singing a nursery rhyme that I taught her. A figure tucked into the corner of a cage near the back, deep in the darkness, stirs.

“Meredith?” I breathe, stepping forward, my mind going entirely blank.

“Reggie,” Calvin warns.

Instinct overrides judgment, and I stumble toward the back without a thought, Calvin at my heels.

A flash of movement from the last of the metal-barred cells stops me in my tracks. A second figure I overlooked steps out of the darkness. Close enough to reach through the bars and grab the front of my sweatshirt, hauling me close. Calvin snarls and tries to pull me back, but the trap is already closing around us.

“You came back,” Zara says, pure shock in her tone, face an inch from mine, separated by bars. “You fell for it.”

20

Prodigal

Lights flare on in the little clear-walled cell, temporarily blinding me. A bright spot of light that shows only empty space⁠—Eldi isn’t there.

Guards come from all directions, emerging from the darkness as Zara releases me. Even as I take down three of them, reflexes taking control, I know it’s over. Calvin ruins a single cell, warping the bars with a gesture of his hands and half transforming before a guard manages to slide a syringe into his biceps. With a yelp, he’s abruptly human again. A suppressant. His powers will be useless for a solid twenty-four hours. I’m still struggling as his weapons are systematically removed, and he’s locked in the cell next to Zara and Meredith.