“They’re going to bite us,” she whispered, clutching my hand, patting Celeste through her grimy shirt. “I can read their minds too.”
“No, sweetie,” I said softly. “They’re just afraid of us. They’ve never seen such huge, ugly . . . creatures before, and they want to check us out.”
I was rewarded with a tiny smile. “We’re ugly to them. Right.”
It took Iggy three minutes, which was a personal record for him, breaking the old four-and-a-half-minute record required by the three locks on my closet.
Iggy, Fang, and I gripped the edge of the door with our fingernails and pulled—there was no doorknob. Slowly, slowly, the immensely heavy door creaked open.
Revealing a long, dark, endless staircase ahead of us. Going down. Of course.
“Yeah, this is what we needed,” Fang muttered. “A staircase going down to the Dark Place.”
Iggy blew out his breath, less than thrilled. “You first, Max.”
I put my foot on the first step.
You’re on your own now, Max, said my Voice. See you later.
124
My headache was back, worse than before. “Let’s keep it moving,” I called over my shoulder.
Unlike the sewer, there wasn’t even far-off light on the stairs, so it was pitch black. Fortunately, we could all see pretty well in the dark. Especially Iggy.
The steps seemed endless, and there was no handrail. I guess whoever built this wasn’t too concerned with safety.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Fang asked softly.
“We’re approaching our destination,” I said, descending into the darkness. “We’re homing in on the answers we’ve dreamed about getting our whole lives.”
“We’re doing what your Voice has told us to do,” he said.
I was wary. “Yeah? The Voice has been okay so far, right?”
There was a bottom at last. “Here we are,” I said, my heart pounding.
“There’s a wall in front of you,” said Iggy.
I reached out in the blackness, and a few feet away, my outstretched fingers touched a wall, then a door, then a doorknob. “Door,” I said. “Might need you, Iggy.”
I turned the knob, just to see, and lo and behold—the door began to open.
We were all silent. The door swung all the way open without a sound, and a gentle wash of fresh, cool air wafted over us. After the fetid, dank stench of the sewers, it was amazing.
Feeling like Alice in Wonderland falling down the rabbit hole, I stepped forward, my filthy shoes sinking into thick carpet. Yes, carpet.
Dim lights showed me another door, and, almost shrieking with tension, I opened it.
This all suddenly seemed horribly easy, suspiciously easy, scarily easy.
We went through this second door, then stopped and stared.
We were in a lab, a lab just like the one back at the School, thousands of miles away in California.
“We’re in the Institute,” I said.
“Uhm, is that a good thing?” asked Gazzy.