Niko Read online

  Chapter 18

  Niko lay awake in the bed. Dinner was long over and no monster had tried to attack the city. This left their evening quiet and peaceful though Ari and Ben had voiced an occasional complaint about the lull.

  Across the room Ari lay on her stomach, asleep. Snuggles was curled up on the small of her back, its eyes glowing green slits as it stood guard like a little feline sentry.

  Malik was turning into a monster. She wondered what other secrets they were keeping because there were definitely more. With two whole floors of the hotel closed off to her there was no doubt. The question was, what exactly were they hiding?

  She carefully slipped out from beneath the covers trying not to disturb Ari or the cat, who would mew incessantly if woken. The moonlight spilled brightly into the room and she had no trouble dodging furniture to get to the door.

  She slowly turned the knob opening the door just wide enough to slip through and then she was out in the hallway. She tiptoed down the hall, past the rooms where the boys slept; hoping one of them wouldn’t decide to get a late night snack. Though, if she was caught sneaking out at this leg of her journey she could always claim she was doing the same as well. Further on things would get a bit trickier.

  Niko made it across the hall without incident and pushed open the door leading to the stairwell. She had barely taken two steps when she heard the bang of a door being slammed below.

  She froze as the sound echoed upward, competing with the rapid pounding of her heart. Her eyes darted to the door. She could probably be through it and back in bed before whoever was coming up had a chance to see who she was. But as she listened intently she realized there were no footsteps and she relaxed a fraction. Whoever it had been--- more than likely a hotel employee--- had been exiting the stairwell rather than entering it.

  She resumed her climb until she reached the seventh floor. She chose that floor to begin her search because it only had a few rooms locked unlike the eighth, ninth and twelfth floors that she wasn’t even allowed into.

  Now that she was there she wondered how she expected to get in. She hadn’t brought any tools with her. Not that she’d have any idea what to do with them, Shawn was the expert at getting into things he shouldn’t while the sole weapon in her lock-picking arsenal consisted of kicking the door down. She wanted to do this as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. A broken door was neither.

  She went to one anyway and like before it was locked. She tried several others beginning to despair by the time she tried the fifth and last one but to her surprise she didn’t even have to turn the knob, the door opened easily under her hand.

  A heavy curtain was drawn across the window blocking the moonlight and throwing most of the room into shadows. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. Although it was unlocked there seemed to be no one inside and she breathed out a sigh of relief.

  She pulled off her shirt and stuffed it along the bottom of the door before she flipped on the light.

  The artificial glow revealed a room that was rather bare of furnishings with only one chair nestled under a table and three tall grey cabinets. Papers and photos were pinned to the walls and red ink was graffitied to their surface. She stepped up to one for a closer look. DECEASED said one with an X crossed through the smiling face of a woman. Other red notes were scrawled in the margins; sometimes a short phrase but it mostly consisted of incoherent groupings of letters emphasized by exclamation marks.

  She was about to step away when she noticed that there was another photo under the crossed one. Curious, she moved it out of the way. Beneath it was a picture of the same woman but in this version she was barely recognizable.

  The woman was strapped down to a table, her hair was wild and the camera had caught her eye just as they flickered. She bared sharp teeth at them once pretty human lips stretched out and splitting from the strain. Her skin was beginning to turn a dead white color and though her hands were blurred in the photo Niko was willing to bet they had already turned into claws.

  She reared away from the image her back slamming into the metal cabinets. They reverberated dully in response.

  Niko pulled herself away from the cabinets and turned her back to the photos. She pressed her hand against it. Each of the cabinets had four drawers with a small paper window coupling letters alphabetically. Her hand was on a drawer titled U-V. On a hunch she moved over until she found the letter N.

  Inside were fat vanilla files with names on the tabs. She riffled through them until she found one with H. Niko on it. She pulled it out and crouched down with it on the floor.

  She flipped it open and was confronted with a picture of herself. Niko frowned, they must have taken it before waking her for the first time, her eyes were closed and she was surrounded by white. She looked dead.

  She moved it aside skimming her eyes over the first paper.

  “Subject seems unusually silent, possibly withdrawn.” It read. “Has suffered traumatic event involving family members, one deceased, one missing and is prone to occasional violent outbursts. Do not startle (see notes).”

  She flipped the page and found more of Ben’s – because who else could it be really? – Observations about her. From purely dry stuff such as her height, endurance and other mundane things he had discovered during the test, to mildly insulting (“Claims to have killed Slithers before age of manifestation-bravado? Can she count?), to simply weird (“likes crunchy peanut butter”). She hadn’t yet used to other files to compare but she had a feeling that unlike hers the others were strictly academic.

  She inserted her fingers into the stack and flipped to a new, random page. Unlike the other pages this one contained no information about her instead in contained a brief bio about her mother under the acronym NSH. She turned to the next page, which featured her grandfather, a man she’d never met. A great-aunt was also on the page both had SHL stamped next to their names. Niko flipped some more, most of the papers had yellowed and the dates were far too old to have been in Ben’s handwriting. She went through a couple more names all connected to her by blood with only a few mentioned to have killed Slithers.

  Then she came upon one last page. It was older than all the rest and official looking. It contained the names of a Khadijah Anthony and a Chris Rafter and in a dry tone noted: Submitted to experimentation 2029 successfully conceived 2030. Baby boy is healthy but exhibits no signs of genetic modification after a two year observation. Relatively normal, subject: failure.”

  There was a photo, though faded and worn at the edges Niko could still make out the oddly dressed couple. A dark-skinned woman held a baby. She looked tired but happy as did the man who had his arms wrapped around both of them.

  She brushed her fingers over the glossy surface. What had they hoped to accomplish that they were willing to sacrifice themselves and their child for it?

  She quickly thumbed through the rest of the folder; it probably wasn’t a good idea to stay in the room long. Though she had stuffed her shirt along the bottom some light might still have slipped through, waiting to be noticed.

  She hefted the folder into her arms struggling to balance the weight, and then with a slippery clatter a slew of photos fell to the floor.

  With a low curse she dropped back down. She’d only intended to wantonly sweep the whole pile into the folder but as she brushed them together she happened to look at one of the pictures. It was of her house, which shouldn’t have been unusual, but in the photo her house was intact. She’d met Ari and the rest for the first time on the night of the fire.

  There were more and many of them were of her, sometimes alone scavenging or with her brothers or receiving water rations. She shoved the pictures into the folder not caring if someone found out they were disturbed. The last picture was of her brother. Jared looked thin and haggard his brown skin dulled to a muddy grey color. There was a bright red cut on his cheek shaped like a crescent moon.

  She flipped the picture over, the backside read: Joined Gemini Gang, last s
een 5-18 when gang relocated.”

  Her heart leaped. He was alive! But just as quickly it all came crashing down. The photo was dated almost a month ago but they’d never breathed a word to her. Obviously they had known where he was long enough to take a furtive photo. Feeling sick she tried to remember what day Malik had taken her to the South Gate. Was it before the photo? Or had the visit just been part of an elaborate deception, a ruse to get her to stay however long they dawdled finding Jared.

  She shoved the folder into the drawer minus the photo. Whatever reason they had for not telling her about Jared had backfired, she was leaving. She could find her brother faster on her own.

  The door opened and Ben stepped in, humming a tune under his breath. She froze. He froze.

  His hand rested on the doorknob; the other carried a steaming mug. He balanced an apple in the crook of his elbow and held the last item, a sandwich, between his lips.

  He let the door go and it closed behind him with a soft snick. He pulled the sandwich out of his mouth. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”

  Niko backed up. She could lie and make up an excuse as to why she was in there but she decided not to insult his intelligence. All sorts of questions collided around her mind, vying for importance but the one that finally made it out was neither highly important nor terribly pertinent.

  “Who took those pictures?”

  For a moment he simply looked confused but then his eyes slid over to the metal cabinets. “Oh.”

  He set down the mug and apple. “Ari took most of them.”

  The answer did nothing to placate her. She pressed Jared’s photo to her chest and Ben bent to pick up the shirt she had shoved along the bottom of the door. He handed it to her.

  She quickly pulled it over her head never letting go of the photo. Her chest heaved as if she had been running for her life. “Why – ” She cut herself off. She was about to ask after her brother until she suddenly realized she didn’t really have the stomach for any more lies and evasions. She was leaving, she wasn’t exactly sure when or how but she wasn’t going to let anything stop her.

  He brought a finger to his lips. “Can you wait until tomorrow? We’ll tell you everything then.”

  Niko gave him a single nod and began to move toward the door. His arm snaked out and caught her around the waist. She tensed as he bent his head toward hers but he only said, “Wear black.”

  She said nothing simply stared at him until he removed his arm and she left the room. She heard the distinct sound of a lock being turned and doubted she would ever be able to get into the room so easily again.

  Back in her own room Ari was still asleep though Snuggles was no longer keeping sentry on her back.

  Niko curled up on her own bed curving her body around the photo of her brother softly tracing his features with her finger over and over again.