“Oh, don’t worry, she’s still alive. Just not as mentally present as she once was. She still lives in the building—they all do. I believe you may have even made her acquaintance. Though it was not her—our—given name, she has gone by the name of Lois since arriving at the Eschatorologic.”
This last sentence, Everly found herself saying aloud, along with the Warden, in mumbled words that hardly felt as if they belonged to her. She still could not see the Warden’s face, but she thought perhaps the woman was smiling. Thought perhaps she had paused in a moment of appreciation for what Everly had done, though Everly didn’t understand it herself.
“So, you see,” the Warden said, “it has already begun.”
“What has begun?” Everly asked the one question, she thought, that she still did not know the answer to. Or was trying not to know the answer to.
“You are beginning to understand. You are beginning to change.” A deep breath, and then the Warden said, “I am dying, Everly. Or fading, I suppose. At any rate, I will not be able to remain the Warden for much longer. The role must continue, however—there is still work to be done—and so, as Lois once did, I will soon need a replacement.”
Everly’s breath briefly caught, and she said in a flat voice, “You cannot possibly mean me,” though part of her by now knew that she must.
“Of course, I mean you, Everly. There is no one else.” Then Everly heard again the click of heels, and she realized that the Warden was walking around the table, coming into her line of vision.
She stood in front of Everly and then paused, looking into her eyes. Everly didn’t understand what she was seeing at first (even though, on some level, she must have always known). The woman was dressed in all black, from head to toe, but that was not what caught Everly’s attention. Standing out starkly against the black clothes were the woman’s bright blue eyes, rimmed with a circle of green, and her dark red hair. The realization was there, in Everly’s mind, but it was so impossible, so unthinkable, that she tried with everything in her to suppress it, to shove away the truth that was standing directly in front of her.
The Warden . . . was her. She was older—midthirties, late thirties maybe—but once the realization had sunk in, it was undeniable. That was Everly, standing before her.
Everly sputtered, but no words would come. How could they? It was so unimaginable, beyond anything she possibly could have thought up.
But you know that it has to be, that small voice in the back of her head said, cutting through all the rest. You know that it’s all true.
The Warden smiled, as though reading her thoughts—and perhaps she could. She continued to look Everly in the eye—her own eyes, staring back at her.
“You understand, Everly? It has to be you, there is no other choice. You have to be the next Warden.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Richard Dubose was growing anxious.
He knew what had to be happening right now. He had seen enough versions of the Warden’s plan by now to have been prepared for the beats it would enact throughout the building—the so-called pattern that she was so attached to. He knew who she would be with by now, knew what she would be saying. He knew where the other players were bound to be, and he knew the role he was meant to carry out himself before it was all over.
He had his own plan, this time around.
And finally, finally, the answers to go along with that plan.
The solution.
He’d first had the idea when Jamie had mentioned a kid who kept running away. It wasn’t too hard after that to learn the truth of the boy who kept going where he wasn’t supposed to. A child with wandering feet perhaps wouldn’t have been enough to raise an alarm in Richard’s head, until he’d been told who the child was. And then it seemed almost too perfect to be true.
He’d brought him in immediately, of course. Oh, he didn’t need to go through the whole rigamarole of normal testing—a vial of blood was all they really needed.
And it was worth it.
Richard knew how to save Everly now.
He just needed her to see, needed her to understand the importance of what he was doing. All those other times, he didn’t think those Wardens ever really saw it. What the building was capable of. What the anomaly was capable of. But this time—this time it would be different. This version of Everly was different—she had to be. So, she was going to listen to him. Agree with him.
And then together, they could make a difference.
Find a way for her to live. The way her mother hadn’t.
It was all down to timing, and Richard’s had to be perfect.
It wouldn’t be long now. In the meantime, all he had to do was wait.
Chapter Fifty
Michael sat up.
It was the middle of the night (relatively speaking, but the lights were all off), and he was not one to wake up like that.
But he’d had a dream.
Michael stood up from his bed and rubbed at his sleep-crusted eyes, feeling his way in the dark across the small room to his door. It wasn’t until after he had already opened the door and stumbled out into the hallway beyond that Michael thought to question why the door had opened at all, when it was usually locked at this hour.
Not usually. Always. His door was always locked during the night, yet, this night it wasn’t. Michael shrugged and kept walking.
His dream had told him where to go, so he didn’t question his feet as they trailed down one path and then another. He didn’t question them as they led him to a door he had never entered before, and he didn’t question the stairs he found on the other side.
The door that, again, unlocked for him when it should not have. The all-black floor that he had never seen before. The unknown directions that were leading him on, on, on. The door that he finally stopped in front of which, again, opened beneath his touch.
Michael rubbed at the bend in his arm where a bandage was wrapped tightly around the skin as he stepped into the room that his feet, and his dream, had led him toward and met the eyes of Dr. Richard Dubose.
“Hello, Michael,” Richard said with a smile, placing the bowler hat over his gray hair. “Are we ready to do some work tonight?”
Chapter Fifty-One
Luca came to consciousness slowly, swimming through a pit of molasses to return to the waking world, and when he finally did, his eyes creaked open before immediately snapping shut again.
