Shadow Breakers (19 page)

“Don't forget,” says Miss Bellini softly as she sits down opposite me. “The speed of the hand deceives the eye.” She produces the small white ball, seemingly from nowhere, and holds it up between her black-gloved thumb and forefinger.

I lift one of the cups and Miss Bellini carefully places the ball under it. I move the cups around, slowly at first, then more quickly. Miss Bellini is watching intently. I move them about for a minute, applying the gentle pressure of my fingers to the smooth surface of the cups.

Finally, I stop, leaving the cups in a perfect line. I gesture at them.

“Go on, then. Which one?”

Immediately, Miss Bellini's gloved forefinger taps the one on my right. “I think that one.”

“You sure?” I ask her cheekily.

Miss Bellini spreads her hands.

I lift the cup, and the ball has gone.

She smiles, nods in approval. “Now the others.”

I lift the second cup, and find nothing under it. And the third — and there's nothing there either. The ball has disappeared.

Miss Bellini claps delightedly. “Miranda! You've been practicing.”

I shrug, smiling. “I've done my research. It's nothing to do with
magic
, or even sleight of hand. Just science, pure and simple.” I flip the last cup up and trace my finger around the almost-invisible filigree of heat elements built into the smooth inner surface. “It cools really quickly. What's it made of?”

“A titanium alloy.” Miss Bellini sounds very matter-of-fact. “Used by the US military in stealth bombers. Clever, isn't it?”

I nod. “And the ball — something that . . . sublimates quickly? Turns really easily from a solid into a gas?”

Miss Bellini nods. “A mutated allotrope of liquid nitrogen. One that's safe to handle. Under slight heat, it dissolves in seconds, leaving no trace — just colorless, odorless, non-toxic gas. A gas found in abundance in the atmosphere.” Miss Bellini gives me a broad, satisfied grin. “You worked out most of it, though, Miranda. Congratulations.”

I knew she hadn't spirited the ball away with sleight of hand. But what about a residue? Well, Miss Bellini herself taught us all about sublimation — turning from solid to gas — in Science just a week or so ago. She did it with iodine, but other things sublimate, too. So all that was left then was to ask where the heat for the process came from. I didn't know that for certain until a few minutes ago when I inspected the inner surface of the hemispherical cups a little more closely. Near-invisible, thread-thin heat elements, inlaid into the inner surface, and activated by pressing your fingers down on the top of the cup.

“You know,” says Miss Bellini, “I often think about what Arthur C. Clarke said.”

“The
2001
bloke?”

“Yes. He said that any sufficiently advanced technology is almost indistinguishable from magic. We need to keep open minds, Miranda, but always to be analytical. Rushing headlong at a problem with an emotional response doesn't always work.”

I'll catch you if you fall.

“Sometimes it does,” I say.

I can tell she knows what I mean. That sometimes, thinking isn't enough and you just have to go with what you feel is right.

“Come with me,” says Miss Bellini. “There's one more thing I need to show you. Oh, and — you'll need a coat.”

The elevator is one of those old, creaky, wooden ones, even more dark and cramped than the one from the lobby. We descend in silence.

At last it clunks to a halt, and Miss Bellini opens it up manually, moving aside the double accordion doors. They make a deep, rattling, rumbling sound that echoes through the area where we have stopped so I get a sense of the space. As far as I can see, it's like some huge loading bay, lined with shelves.

I've been down to the storage basement before, Level Zero, to fetch boxes of printer paper and stuff like that — but I know straightaway that's not where we are. It feels wrong.

“Where are we?” I ask. There's a dusty, musty smell, and it's cold — an unearthly chill seeps from every surface and the air is wintry, like the sort you can almost bite when there is snow on the way.

I see now why she told me to bring my jacket. I zip it up, and button the collar across as well.

“Level Minus One,” Miss Bellini says softly.

I look up at her. “I didn't know we had a Level Minus One.”

I glance back at the column of buttons on the still-open elevator behind us. They stop at zero.

She gives me a quick smile. “We don't. Officially. They call it
plausible deniability
.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that if anyone comes sniffing around, nobody knows about it.” Miss Bellini extends her left arm, and reaches out with her right hand to the gold watch on her left wrist.

There is a
click
, then a loud
CHUNG!
and a bank of strip lights suddenly turns on above us.

I blink.

A sequence of similar
CHUNG!
sounds repeats into the distance as more lights come on farther and farther away from us, slowly revealing a metal walkway about three feet or so off the ground. It's lined with banks of what look like filing cabinets. I can see other similar walkways disappearing off in the distance, at different levels.

“Welcome,” says Miss Bellini, “to the Archive.”

I swallow hard, look at the vast expanse before me. “This must go farther than underneath the Seaview Hotel.”

“It does. These were old wartime bunkers. You'll need to know about this, for the future, now that you're sticking around. You are sticking around, I take it? Good. Come this way.”

I notice she didn't wait for an answer to that question. I follow her along the metal walkway, our footsteps clanging and echoing, our shadows intense under the harsh white light.

Each of the filing cabinets, or lockers, or whatever they are, has a chunky, nine-figure keypad on the door instead of a normal lock.

“What's in these?” I ask.

“Impounded materials,” says Miss Bellini. “The digital age is all very well, but some things just can't be reduced to pixels.”

“Impounded?” I ask. “There's so much of it.”

Miss Bellini smiles. “I've been busy. Ten years, more or less, before I came here and got this team together. The fruits of my work.”

We climb a short bank of metal stairs and reach a circular, open area at the end of the banks of lockers where the lighting is dimmer and more purple.

Miss Bellini holds something up. “We have an addition to the collection,” she says.

It's the yellow cylinder. It's been labeled with a bar code and stamped with a date.

“The Animus?” I say with a slight shiver.

Miss Bellini nods curtly. “What's left of it. Yes. Hold it.” She throws it to me.

I jump as I catch the cylinder.

I stare at the matte yellow surface, holding it carefully with my fingertips as Miss Bellini twists her watch dial again.

There is another
CHUNG!
sound, and this time, a dozen or so blue pillars of light stab downward, making pools of radiance on the floor in front of us in a semicircular shape. Inside each one is what looks like a smoked-glass pillar, mounted with a small control panel.

Miss Bellini goes to the nearest one, punches a code in, and the pillar pulls upward to head-height. She snaps her fingers, and I give her the yellow cylinder.

“Maximum containment,” says Miss Bellini by way of explanation. “Only for the most dangerous items.”

She throws the cylinder into the column of light. To my astonishment, it doesn't drop. It just hangs there in midair.

“How do you do that?”

“Magnetic fields, mainly. You know about Faraday?”

I nod. Science, after all, is one class where I do pay attention.

“There you are, then.” Miss Bellini steps back, and the glass pillar descends. She punches a code into the panel again. “That's contained.”

I'm still staring at the small cylinder, floating there, cushioned by nothingness.

I think about the Animus. All the centuries she lived, and the miles she traveled, the things she saw. Always finding sources of heat, and light, and energy. Absorbing, exhaling. Absorbing, exhaling. Caught forever in the cycle of the fire that had saved her from the Plague, but condemned her to eternal life.

All those personalities. All those lives. All those experiences and loves and . . .

“Miss Bellini,” I ask, “I didn't
kill
her, did I?”

Miss Bellini sighs and puts an arm gently around my shoulders. “Child,” she says, “she was not
alive
, not in the sense you and I understand. Her normal human form would have survived for, what, fifty years at most as a woman in the Middle Ages? She should not have
been
in this place, in this time. We have set things right.”

I look up, smile. “Of course,” I say. “Of course we have.”

“And, in a way,” says Miss Bellini, “she helped us.”

“She did?”

Miss Bellini nods, gazing into the dark vaults. “Creatures like the Animus, you see, may not actually be the enemy we face. They are merely . . . manifestations of its effects, if you like. If the enemy is a fire, then they are the flickering shadows upon the wall, the sparks borne upon the breeze and swirling like fireflies into the night.”

“That's very poetic, Miss Bellini. I wish I knew what it meant.”

“You will.” Miss Bellini twists her watch again and the pillar lights go out. “Come on,” she says. “I need to talk to you with the others.”

She turns and heads off back down the walkway, toward the elevator, heels clanging on the metal.

I look over my shoulder one last time, into the blackness of the Archive behind me.

And then I plunge my hands into the pockets of my jacket, and follow Miss Bellini to the elevator.

• • •

Miss Bellini looks at each of us in turn, keeping her hands clasped neatly together, as she often does when she has something important to convey. “You all did very well the other day,” she says. “I'm pleased with you.”

I think about the networks my mother mentioned. I wonder if anyone else has heard and is pleased with us.

We look at one another, smiling proudly. We can't help it.

“Now, the thing is,” says Miss Bellini, “there's going to have to be a little . . . restructuring around here. I want to ask Miranda to join us full-time.”

“Well,” says Cal, “as close to full-time as any of us can be. With schoolwork and all that.”

“Indeed,” says Miss Bellini. “But nobody here seems to have a problem with that. . . . You know we need someone like you, Miranda, not just for your gifts. . . . We need someone who's got a little edge. Someone not just with the courage to make decisions, but the daring to do things a little differently. Like you said before — it's not necessarily just about thinking.”

I feel nervous of the group. Do I really belong here? Over the last few days I have been wondering what would happen, now that this is all over. Because I know they have been investigating many strange occurrences in Firecroft Bay, and I know Ollie, for one, needs a question answered. . . . Perhaps the others do, too. And then there are those horses.

I don't like unanswered questions. But that's what life has.

“I don't know if I'm ready to do that,” I say, but as I hear myself say it I am not convinced.

“You're already part of the group, Miranda May.” Miss Bellini leans forward, her mouth wearing just the hint — just the shadow — of a smile. Her eyes are bright and black behind her glasses. “I couldn't see what was under my nose, guys. That scares me. Does it scare you? It should. It's made me think a few things through.”

“I'm still not sure about all this,” I say. “I'm only twelve!”

“Thirteen next week, I gather.” She raises her eyebrows.

Blimey. With everything else that's been going on, I'd completely forgotten about my own birthday.

Ohhh . . . bowling.
That's
what my mum was talking about. My birthday party.

She was asking me if I still wanted to go bowling for my birthday, and I acted like a total dumbo. I feel like smacking my forehead with my open palm, like they do in sitcoms.

“So?” says Miss Bellini. “What's it to be, Miranda? Yes or no?”

“I won't let you down, Miss Bellini,” I say.

She nods. “I know,” she says. “You are special, Miranda, and we need you as much as you need us.”

She holds my gaze for a second longer before turning and going back up into the Pod.

Nervously, I turn and look up at Josh. His eyes are half hidden by his hair, and his expression is giving nothing away.

Eventually, he says, “Welcome to the team, then.
Special
Girl.” There's a bit of an edge to that.

I shrug. “I feel . . . a bit awkward.” I smile at the others. “I'm sure I'll get used to it, guys.”

There's a moment's pause.

“You will,” Cal says softly.

Lyssa and Ollie smile.

“It'll be good to have you around,” says Ollie, nodding affably.

“Girls outnumber the boys now,” Lyssa points out with a cheeky grin.

I smile. “Thanks. And I mean it. I won't let you down.”

Oh, and they know I'll be watching them, too. After all, they weren't averse to using me when it was necessary.

Josh strolls over to the pool table. It's still my turn, but I don't say anything. In one smooth movement he lines up the shot, leans in, clicks the cue, and sends the white cannoning into the black. It powers across the table and slams into the far pocket.

He saunters back over, hands the cue back to me.

“Well,” he says, and half smiles. “I think you'll fit in just fine.”