Page 59 of Butterfly Effects

“So the queens, what, keep it all for themselves?”

“For themselves and for their guards.”

Sam slid through the hole as we were speaking, then held up the window for us to see. “Should I put this back?”

“The Johrlac do have eyes, and they do see the inanimate,” said Alice. “It would be best if you could, dear, yes. Please.”

Sam nodded and shoved the window back into place, frowning as he asked, “If they have eyes and everything, why do they not see us?”

“Oh, they see us. We just … don’t matter,” said Alice. “We’re nothing important. We can’t be people, because they don’t pick anything up when they look at us. Most prey species that evolve alongside telepathic predators develop natural mental shields, and the predators just look right past them. They might as well be rocks, or trees, or something else not worth bothering with.”

“But a missing window would matter,” said Thomas. “Someone would notice that it didn’t look right, and report it to someone else, who might come to have a look. Sooner or later, they’d figure out that something was going on, and then we’d have to worry about people who were actually looking for something out of the ordinary. When they start paying attention to their surroundings, they can find things they wouldn’t normally notice.”

“So we’re invisible until we’re not, got it,” said Sam. “That is the absolute worst superpower ever. ‘You’re invisible until someone realizes they might need to see you.’ Why not just skip the invisibility entirely?”

“Why not spend some energy picking that lock rather than criticizing the way the brains of people from another dimension went and evolved?” asked Alice.

“Yes, ma’am.” Sam turned toward the door.

Meanwhile, I began circling the room, looking for anything that might tell us what we were up against. It was a depressingly featureless space. There was no furniture: no desk to break into, no computer to poke at. Not even a filing cabinet or chair. “What do you think they do in here?” I asked.

“Best guess? They station someone to stand in here and listen to the prisoners,” said Alice, with more cheer than felt entirely appropriate to the statement. “The lock helps them be sure that if anything goes wrong, they’re secure in here until help can arrive. And Johrlar isn’t big on written records, so it’s not like they’d need to keep any sort of files in here in order to track their prisoners.”

“Not sure that makes me feel better,” I said, slanting a glance over at the door, where Sam was dutifully trying to pick the lock. He’d been practicing, and his natural dexterity combined with even the slightest understanding of what he was trying to do was rapidly making him one of our better locksmiths.

“Just about—there,” he said, and there was a sharp clicking sound from the lock. He leaned back on his heels, looking pleased with himself.

Thomas stepped forward and turned the knob, then pushed the door inward, revealing the featureless hall beyond. Literally featureless: the walls were smooth grayish paper, with no decoration or texturing at all. Looking at them drove home just how much the downstairs atrium and map room had been intended for public use, and just how much this space, well, wasn’t.

“Try to stick to the curve of the outer wall,” said Alice. “Again, they’re going to be doing their best to keep prisoners as far from their queens as possible.”

I nodded, stepping out into the hall.

Together, the four of us moved along it, pausing when we reached the first door. It was smooth and unmarked, without any sort of window or peephole. What use would they have been? It wasn’t like the guards were going to be checking on their prisoners visually.

I looked around, finally finding a low slot on the wall through which a tray could potentially be shoved. I knelt down.

“Be careful,” Alice advised. “They may not know you’re there, but if they see the hatch on the meal slot move, they could try to stab you through the opening.”

“Stab me with what?” I asked. “You said there was no metal.”

“They use bamboo cutlery. It still hurts when it stabs you.”

“I’ll be careful,” I said, and gently eased the hatch open, taking care to keep my fingers on the very corner of the flap. It was made from polished wood, out of place against all the paper, but at least fitting with the tech level of its surroundings.

I crouched lower, peering through the slot. There was a single male Johrlac in the room, huddled in the corner next to the bed that had been provided for him, hugging his knees. He didn’t look inclined to stab anyone. He also didn’t look like he’d noticed me. Unlike the other Johrlac I’d seen in this dimension, he wasn’t wearing a colored jumpsuit: instead, he was dressed in a loose gray-brown uniform that looked almost like pajamas. I let the hatch swing closed and looked over my shoulder at the others, shaking my head.

“Not this one,” I said.

“But there was a prisoner?” asked Thomas.

“Yeah. Just a Johrlac, all by himself. He looked … defeated. Like he’d given up on ever getting out of here. But the room didn’t look any emptier than the rest of the building.”

“We don’t know what their homes are like,” said Alice. “Maybe he’s used to lots of color and activity, and being put into a boxy little room is bad for his mental health. Maybe he’s been cut off from the rest of the hive mind so he can think about what he’s done. Do you want to ask him?”

“No. I want to find Arthur and Sarah.”

“Then we keep moving.”