Chapter 96: Albie!

Everyone spoke at once. Three voices in my headset and three around me.

“Albie!” Lena cried.

“Who?” Donica asked.

“The little girl from the park?” Zhizhi wondered.

The support team’s voices, too fast, too high, overlapped into static in my headset. I started to tug it away, but my hand froze when I saw Lena move past me.

“What are you doing here, kiddo? It’s...” She reached out to Albie, took a half-step toward her, but faltered.

I got it.

I hadn’t run to Albie, either, you know? Even though we’d been looking for her for the past week, I could barely shift, much less walk.

Albie was a dozen feet away. The front door, a sprint past. I wanted to scoop up the former and scoot out the latter.

But between the two, the elevator doors gaped open. I was looking at the elevator from the opposite angle, and I still saw the mirrored surface of its inner wall. It should have reflected the mirror I saw the first time. Instead, it –

Whatever it did, I averted my eyes from it.

Taking a step toward it felt as impossible as it was inescapable.

It terrified me to think Albie stood halfway to it. I should’ve grabbed her and pulled her away.

I couldn’t move.

Albie’s hands clutched at the edges of her Third Eye avatar’s burgundy cloak. She pulled it tighter around herself. Cloak? Avatar? Both? I didn’t know. She said, “You’ve gotta turn back.”

“I don’t know how you got in here, little girl,” Donica said, “but it’s dangerous.”

Her tone made Lena shoot her a glare.

Albie just gave a slow bob of her head.

“We need to leave,” Donica said. “Now. You need to leave.”

Another bob. “Uh-huh.”

“The front door is right there. If you think I’m going back into that warehouse, you’re in for an education.”

“Hey!” Lena and I both turned to Donica.

She brushed past us.

Albie shook her head frantically.

Donica took a full step forward.

She fell.

That’s the best way I can describe it, but it’s not even close to accurate.

One minute she was stalking toward Albie. The next she was tumbling. Her arms stretched out, her legs pumped, she tipped forward, she slid forward, she spun. It all happened in slow motion. It almost looked like she was swimming in the air, or in zero gravity.

As she tumbled, I got a look at her face, ashen, wide-eyed, mouth open, soundless.

Albie shouted, “Don’t!” and whipped her hands through a series of motions too fast for me to follow.

A gust of wind ripped through the lobby. I didn’t know how strong it must’ve been in Third Eye, but just the IRL echoes shoved Donica back. Zhizhi and I caught her.

Even when the wind died down, Donica tried to stagger backwards, her eyes wild. I held on to her just to keep her from breaking line of sight with us.

“I’m sorry,” Albie said, “but you’re not supposed to be here. You’re not ready for this.”

Lena looked down at her feet and gritted her teeth. She spread her arms. “But you are, kiddo?”

Albie smiled sadly. “I gotta be.”

I wanted so badly to talk to Albie, to get an explanation. Was this why she looked scared the other day? Would we be ready eventually? Was this planned content?

Was this what Third Eye was for?

But I couldn’t even bring myself to speak.

I could barely keep my eyes focused on Albie.

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The elevator was open. It was here. Pristine carpet, gleaming fixtures, everything the lobby would’ve been if it had been completed, but real and visible with or without Third Eye. I stared into it. I tilted my head to get a better look. If I just looked closer, I was sure I would understand the reflection. It seemed like a spiral, but there was no curvature to it; nothing moved, but I sensed motion.

“Don’t look at it.” Albie shifted to interpose herself between me and the elevator.

I squeezed my eyes shut and realized how much my head ached, how much my stomach churned.

Donica tensed. I heard Zhizhi shift beside me.

The elevator was already here. Its doors were already open.

So why did the bell tone of its arrival echo through the lobby, seeming to grow louder with each time it rebounded onto us?

“Go!” Albie screamed.

We went.

I dragged Donica, but she didn’t offer any more resistance. Lena didn’t ask any more questions, and Zhizhi didn’t object. We dashed back through the doorway, into the shop we hadn’t inspected, and around the counter.

Albie followed, backpedaling. Her hands danced in the air and her feet over the concrete floor. She didn’t look at the stands or shelves or counter, but slipped between them effortlessly. She didn’t look at us, but seemed to know we were there. And to want us gone. “Run!”

We did. Back into the warehouse.

I was the last one through, and despite every instinct in my body, I refused to let myself let go of the door until Albie joined us. As soon as she did, I flung the door away from me. Putting even that feeble, swinging barrier between me and the elevator let me breathe again, start to think again.

Maybe ask some questions?

While I staggered back, Albie turned to the door and made a series of gestures. I didn’t need to raise my phone to see its wood swell and twist until it couldn’t swing anymore.

How much Earth did it take to shape a real object?

Or was anything back here real?

Albie’s tiny hands pushed at my waist. “Please don’t stop, Cam.”

No questions.

We ran further into the warehouse.

“Where are we going?” Donica gasped.

All right, maybe one question. We couldn’t go back to the lobby. It wouldn’t make any sense, even if we circled around one of the other little shops closer to the front door. Anything that led us into the lobby put us too close to the elevator.

“Please put me on speaker, Donica,” Erin said. Her unexpected voice sent a shot of panic through me. Donica must have done as she asked, because I heard her echoing from multiple directions when she continued. “Miss Albie? If they break a window in one of the outside rooms, will they actually get out to Denver? Or is the space much weirder than that?”

For the first time since we’d seen her in here, Albie smiled. “That’s a great idea.”

“Vet’s office,” I said.

Donica nodded.

The room she and I searched the first time we came here had external windows. Glass, but broken glass was the least of our worries now. We could find the nearest door from the warehouse by looking for the inspection report. We might even be able to follow our footprints.

No way were we going to run around the outer wall, not when the aisles offered a straighter shot. Donica bolted down the first one she came to and the rest of us piled in after her.

Just a few steps’ head start put her dozens of feet ahead. It was hard to tell from the shelves and concrete, but overhead, the wires between the fluorescent bulbs seemed to twist and stretch.

I tried to pour on speed, and, absurdly, my legs still didn’t burn from it.

I heard a crash behind me and risked turning.

Lena, Albie, and Zhizhi kept running after me. None of them had fallen.

The crash had come from the door Albie tried to seal.

Another crash followed, metal as well as wood this time. One of the shelves.

Something was in the warehouse with us.

I thought about how long those shelves were, how heavy they must be, even before you accounted for the warped space.

Something big was in the warehouse with us.

I stumbled and caught myself on a shelf. It didn’t even budge. How much force would you need to tip these things over?

Zhizhi ran past without pausing, but Lena stopped to grab my arm and steady me.

“Keep running,” Albie said. She skidded to a stop and tugged on my and Lena’s sleeves. “NugsFan15 had a good idea. You two are the strongest right now. You have to get the other two out.”

I squared myself up to try. I took a step.

Lena said, “What about you?”

I realized that Albie had let go of our sleeves, not to run, but to step backwards. She folded her hands in front of her. “I’ll make sure you get the chance.”

Lena shook her head. “No way we leave you behind, Albie.”

“You gotta,” Albie said.

Another crash punctuated her words.

“The kid obviously knows what she’s talking about,” Donica called. Despite her words, she seemed to have stopped, too, what seemed like an impossible distance down the aisle. “Don’t you trust her?”

A wave of heat blasted off Lena. “Of course I do, but I’m not gonna –”

“Please!” Albie cried. Her tone was the same as when she’d given me her Potion.

Lena grabbed my arm. “Cam, we can’t just leave her.”

“Albie knows what she’s doing,” I said. “A lot better than we do.”

Lena’s eyes blazed. “She’s a little girl, Cameron.”

Albie tried to push us away. Which should have been absurd, as tiny as she was, but though Lena tried to dig her heels in, we slid backwards. Even for the instant I tried to hold my ground, it felt like getting into a shoving match with a car.

I knew Albie was right.

I’d seen her play Third Eye.

I knew she understood far more than we did about what was going on.

Only –

“Albie,” I said.

She stopped pushing us.

She looked up, blinking tears from her dark eyes. “Don’t talk. You have to run.”

“Okay,” I said. “But you’ve got to answer me one thing first.”

I think she knew what I was going to ask, because she swallowed hard.

I asked it anyway. “Do you have another Potion?”

She hesitated, but nodded.

“Is it as good as the one you gave me?” I asked.

Albie’s lip trembled. “That’s two things. I don’t have to answer.”

Which was answer enough.