Strangelets by Michelle Gagnon Read Free Book Online Page B

cliffs.”
    “What about Yosh?” Anat demanded. “She was just walking to school.”
    “Haven’t had a chance to ask her yet,” Declan said. “We’ll see when she returns.”
    “If she returns,” Anat grumbled. What if he was right? What if they were, in fact, dead, and trapped somewhere? She shook it off. She didn’t believe in an afterlife, that was Christian nonsense. Declan was just trying to frighten her.
    “It is odd,” Declan mused. “I’d always figured on going straight to hell.”
    “Stop talking about it,” Anat said sharply. “You’re wrong.”
    “We’ll see, won’t we? If Yosh and Zain come back, and it turns out those vents don’t lead anywhere at all, well then …” He shrugged.
    Anat turned her back on him and crossed her arms, refusing to listen to any more of his nonsense.
    All at once, there was a groan of metal hinges from down the hall. Declan and Nico leapt to their feet. Anat was already at the hook in the corridor by the time they caught up to her.
    A seam had appeared in the wall at the end of the hallway in the boys’ wing; it slowly creaked open. Anat cursed silently; she should have found that when she examined the boys’ side. Obviously she hadn’t looked closely enough.
    In spite of her irritation, a wave of profound relief sweptover her. Declan had been wrong. There was a way out. They were alive.
    Yosh stood there. In addition to plaster dust, she was covered in filth and cobwebs.
    And she was alone.
    “Bloody well done!” Declan exclaimed. “How’d you get it open?” He walked forward and examined the door. “Brilliant,” he said. “Looks like just another wall panel. Lined with concrete, too, so we wouldn’t have known even if we tackled this section …”
    Anat tuned him out; she couldn’t care less about the door, as long as it stayed open. Something was off about the Japanese girl, though. She had a glazed look in her eyes, and she was clenching and releasing her fists.
    “Are you all right?” Nico lay a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t react. He exchanged a worried look with Anat.
    “What’s wrong?” Anat demanded. “Where is the Indian?”
    “He has a name, you know,” Declan said as he came back over to them. “Young Zain didn’t get stuck in the vents, did he?”
    Without responding, Yosh turned on her heel and slipped back into the darkness. They all stared after her.
    “That was bloody strange,” Declan muttered. “What do you think?”
    “We follow her,” Anat said.
    “Well, yeah,” Declan said. “But why does she look like she’s seen a ghost?”
    “Guess we’ll find out,” Nico said with a shrug, but his eyes were anxious when they met hers.
    They hesitated a second longer, then Anat decided. “I’m following her.”
    “Right. Let me get Sophie, we’ll be right behind you.”Declan turned back toward the girls’ wing and strode down the hall.
    Once he vanished around the bend, Nico turned to Anat and said, “I don’t like this.”
    “I don’t either,” she replied in a low voice. “I’ll watch your back if you watch mine.”
    “Deal.” He reached out to shake her hand. She felt old calluses on his palm. Nico gave her a broad smile in spite of the circumstances, and held the grip an instant longer than necessary. Anat frowned, hoping he wasn’t going to take watching her back too literally. “Let’s go.”

“What is this place?” Sophie asked.
    Declan didn’t trust himself to answer. He’d practically carried her up five flights of stairs and was panting from the effort. The stairwell was long and narrow, made entirely of concrete with the floors marked off by numbers stenciled in black paint. There were doors to other levels at each landing, but they were all locked, and as long as the stairs kept going up he figured they needn’t bother checking them. It reminded him of a car-park stairwell, except it didn’t reek of piss. The air was musty and stale, though, which wasn’t much of an