The Secret Sea (28 page)

“Oh, man, zombie cockroaches. It gets weirder and weirder.…”

He shook himself and pulled away from the aquarium. He had more important things to worry about. He did what he should have done from the beginning: crouched down near the doctor and frisked him. Khalid found in Bookman's inner jacket pocket something that looked like a smaller version of the Wonder Glass III he'd used at the Apple store. But when he tapped and swiped at it, it only lit up with the familiar line-through-a-circle icon and the words
UNAUTHORIZED USER
.

Figures. I get the one guy in the world who actually puts a passcode on his phone.

Dr. Bookman groaned and flailed with the hand that was not pinned under his body. Khalid, crouching, lost his balance and fell backward on his butt. Squish.

“Back and forth…,” Bookman moaned. His eyes fluttered open, then closed, then open again, the eyelids twitching. Beneath, his eyes looked but did not see. Khalid waved a hand before them to confirm; Bookman didn't even blink.

“Traveling … too much…,” Bookman said. “Back and forth.”

“Back and forth?”

“The walls … are weak.…”

Khalid looked back and forth and all around. The office's walls seemed stable enough.

“Godfrey … spirit … too…”

“Hey, Doc? Doc, can you hear me?” Khalid snapped his fingers in front of Bookman's face again, even though it hadn't worked before. Never had he felt so utterly helpless, so powerless. He should be running for help. Or—even better—he should actually be doing something helpful. But all he could do in that moment was stay rooted to the spot, leaning in, snapping his fingers like a moron. A moron with rhythm, sure, but still a moron.

“Stop him … Don't let…”

“Dr. Bookman? Can you hear me? You gotta help me out, man. I need to know what to do. I mean, do I go after this electroleum stuff? Is that my play? Or do I keep looking for Zak?” He stood up and wiped his hands on his shirt, which did nothing to dry them. “Oh, man, you're not listening. You can't hear me.”

Khalid dropped to his knees next to the sofa. “Zak and Moira are gone and you're unconscious and … and…” He groaned and threw his hands in the air in frustration. “And I think even your cockroach experiment has gone off the rails, FYI.”

And Dr. Bookman's eyes, which had fluttered and danced between open and closed the whole time, suddenly snapped opened long enough to stare into Khalid's for a fixed, terrifying moment.

“It's. Gone,” said Dr. Bookman, his voice strong and clear. “Get. Help.”

And then he immediately passed out.

 

FORTY-SEVEN

The clinch lasted longer than they had time for but at the same time not nearly long enough.

“You're alive,” Moira babbled, then hated herself for saying it, then figured it didn't matter because he
was
. Zak was alive and looking great.

“Dr. White-eagle helped me,” he said, finally breaking the embrace, holding her at arm's length. “I think I'm cured.”

“Are you kidding me?” Moira looked over at the woman who'd opened the door, dressed in what appeared to be some kind of medical garb. “Dr. White-eagle?”

“Yeah, over there.” Zak jerked a thumb toward a newcomer, a stooped figure ambling into the room.

As soon as Moira saw Dr. White-eagle, her stomach clenched, and her inner voice screamed,
Run!

Roughly twenty-four hours in this world was all it had taken to make her terrified at the sight of a man. That's all it took.

She grabbed Zak's hand and dragged him toward the door. “We're going. Now. Hurry.”

Zak pulled away. “Wait a sec, Moira. I don't even have my shoes—”

Moira growled deep in her throat, more out of frustration than actual threat. She backed up, interposing herself between the woman she now realized was a nurse—of
course
—and the front door, so that she could run if she had to.

“Get your things,” she said, “and then we're out of here.” Holding a palm up toward the doctor, she said, “Take it easy. I'll be gone soon enough.”

“Here, now!” Dr. White-eagle exclaimed. “What's going on here? Who's this girl in my house?” He snapped his fingers and pointed to Zak. “Are
you
her companion? What the
devil
is going on?”

From Zak's expression, Moira realized that he had no idea that women were second-class citizens in this world. He didn't understand the danger she was in just by standing in the doorway, alone.

“Nothing for you to worry about,” Moira told the doctor. “We're going to get out of your hair, and you can forget you ever saw me.”

“I highly doubt that,” the doctor said with some amusement. “A young girl, on her own, comes barging into my house to steal a patient? I assure you, that is something I'll remember for quite some time.”

Zak had grabbed his shoes in the meantime and joined her at the door. “Moira, these people helped me. We can trust them.”

“Trust
me
, Zak. Three Basketeers.”

Dr. White-eagle shook his head, a sad grimace distorting his aged face. “I've known many good women in my day. None of them flouted the law like this, young lady.”

“We're going now,” Moira announced with supreme confidence. The doctor seemed surprised by the tone in her voice, and the nurse did a double take, clucking her tongue as if to say “for shame.” That bothered Moira more than the reaction of an army of sexist men.

“We're leaving, and I'm going to ask you—very respectfully and very politely—not to call the police or report us. As a personal favor. Not as a woman to a man, but as one human being to another.”

The doctor crossed his arms over his chest. “That boy is my responsibility. Ethically and legally.”

“I really have to go,” Zak said apologetically, slipping on his shoes. “It's tough to explain.”

He backed out the door with Moira. She jammed her cap back on her head once they had the door closed.

“What's going on?” Zak demanded when they were alone.

No time. White-eagle was probably already on the phone with the cops. “Can you run?” she asked Zak.

“Now? Better than ever, I bet.”

“Then let's.”

*   *   *

Heaving and gasping for breath, they stumbled against each other as they collapsed into a doorway somewhere along Eighth Avenue. The building was condemned or closed or just not accessible from this side, as evidenced by the thick layer of dust along the door handles.

“I think we can rest here for a second,” Moira managed to say between breaths. She pressed herself as far into the doorway as she could, hoping to avoid idle glances from passersby. Her disguise wasn't much of one, she knew, although few people in this world would imagine a woman trying to pull it off. She couldn't risk being recaptured, whether by a street gang or by the police. There was too much at stake.

“Can you maybe tell me what we're running from?” Zak asked.

“Not
we
. Me. I'm the one running.”

Zak cracked the first smile she'd seen from him since they'd left the hospital. The sight of it filled her with so much relief and joy that the fear almost sluiced out of her entirely. “Seems like I kept up,” he said wryly.

“Not what I meant.” She had her breath back now. “I
have
to run. It's dangerous for me here.”

Something flickered in Zak's eyes, and he smacked his forehead with his palm. “Irish! I forgot! I'm sorry—I was so out of it in the alleyway that I totally forgot—”

“Not Irish.”

Moira explained what she'd experienced since leaving him in the alley—the Dutchmen, and almost being sold to Sentius Salazar and whisked away to an auction somewhere.

“I don't … I don't get it.” Zak's entire expression drooped. “This world seems so
cool
. They have all this technology and stuff, but they treat women … How does something like that happen?”

“The technology is just physics,” Moira said. “They got a universe with slightly different physical laws, is all. This world's problem is sociology, not physics. I don't know how it happens. The same way it
doesn't
happen, maybe? Something happened a couple hundred years ago here that got rid of slavery before it ended in our world. Which is great. But then something else
didn't
happen that gave women equal rights in our world.”

“But they speak English and they have cars and the city looks kinda similar. I mean, they have Apple stuff, for God's sake! All of that without women being involved?”

“Maybe some things are inevitable, the way different mammals all evolved four limbs. Or maybe there were women behind the scenes. Or, hey, Zak, maybe God is floating above all of this, pulling the strings to make it work out. I don't know, and I really don't care. The upshot is that I don't think I like this place.”

Zak nodded. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “Yeah, I hear you. Me neither.”

 

FORTY-EIGHT

There was nothing to say, so he didn't. They were stuck in this world, which wasn't so bad for Zak, but for Moira … What could he do about Moira?

“Maybe I could be your—what did they call it?—companion? If you're with me, you'll be safe, right?”

“First of all, I don't think so. You're too young. That's why the cop chased us. And second of all, hey, I mean, you're my best friend and all, but I'm not planning on spending the rest of my life on your arm just so I won't get arrested and sold to the highest bidder.”

“Right.” Zak grimaced. Just a little while ago, this world had seemed like the answer to all his problems. Was Moira's freedom the price he had to pay for his own health and the return of his brother? More important, what could he do about it?

“Maybe it's just New York,” he posited. “Maybe in other places it's safe to be a girl.”

Moira shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe it's just this city or this state or this country. I don't know. You can bet I'm going to figure it out, though. But not right now.”

“Why not? Why wait?”

“Because I have a little bit of good news.” She fished around in a pocket and brought out a flask of a thick liquid that shone with a very pale light. After a moment or two, Zak realized it was very similar to the light that shone on the buildings.

“This is electroleum,” Moira explained. “This is the stuff Tommy mentioned to us.”

Zak took the flask from her, expecting it to be hot, or at least noticeably warm to the touch. It was no warmer than the surrounding air, though. The glass was even slightly cool. He tilted the flask and watched the electroleum perform a slow ooze as it settled into a new position.

“This is the stuff that's going to bring Tommy back to life? It looks like glowing snot.”

“Apparently, this sample is depleted. You can do all kinds of things with it when it's fully charged and programmed. Here's where it comes from.” Moira had produced a folded sheet of something from under her ill-fitting coverall. She opened it silently. It definitely wasn't paper—there was no telltale rustle. Instead, it unfolded into a perfectly smooth surface, its creases melting away.

“What
is
this?” He touched the sheet. It was slick like plastic, but thin like paper. It looked like a blueprint of some sort, but zoomed far out, so he couldn't perceive any details.

“I played with it a little bit on the way over. Watch this.” Moira traced her finger around a section of the blueprint, then tapped inside the area she'd drawn.

Before Zak's eyes, the blueprint zoomed in on that area. He gasped and his jaw dropped. It was like watching paper come to life.

“That's…”

“I know!” Moira's eyes danced with excitement. “Isn't it incredible? It acts like paper, but it's actually some kind of computer display. Can you imagine if they could make phones out of this stuff?”

Zak thought back to Dr. White-eagle's Wonder Glass gadget. “I think they do.”

“Anyway,” she said, now rotating the image with an expert twist of her wrist, “it's totally touch-sensitive. And get this.” She traced a line on the sheet, following a path along the blueprint; where she touched, the sheet emitted a light, illuminating the trail she had made.

“That's cool,” he admitted, “but what are we looking at?”

“This is an electroleum recycling and recharging plant,” she told him. “The guys who kidnapped me were planning on robbing it.”

“But now they're not.”

“Nope. Because we're gonna get there first.”

Her face wore the sort of triumphant and self-satisfied smile he knew well, the Moira-look that meant she'd gone three steps ahead of everyone else and figured out the solution to the problem no one even knew about yet. It was incongruous on the dirty, scratched face under the filthy cap with the misspelled version of
Brooklyn
on it. Yet it was so familiar and felt so much like home that he couldn't help smiling back.

“Why are we doing that?” he asked.

“We need this stuff to break down the walls between life and death, right? That's what Tommy told us. To rescue him and his friend. It'll take energy.”

“Right. But you said that this place was recycling old electroleum. How much energy could be in
that
?”

“It recycles
and
recharges,” Moira reminded him. As though she'd been doing it her whole life, she manipulated the schematic until two different areas were enlarged and glowing. “The Dutchmen were just gonna steal the old electroleum, here. Security is minimal there.”

“But we don't know how to charge it—”