bitter discovery. And in this ability of mine to embrace what is, from that ability shall come triumph and the Improvement of the Race of Man.
Father bides his time, waiting to collect the genes of the girl descended from Elisabeth. I shall seize the opportunity. And the girl. Oh, yes, the girl. She will be mine before she becomes his!
Chapter Five
WANTED
Here goes, I wrote as we bore down upon the front of the building.
Hey, Sam? No matter what, don’t drop hands, okay? We can’t talk if we aren’t touching.
Right, I typed back. I’m not letting go for anything. If I let go, I had no idea how we’d find each other again, short of one of us coming solid.
We approached a large glass wall rather than using the building’s front doors. Even though Will didn’t write it out, I knew where he wanted to go. I’d have to ask him about it later. When we weren’t trying to break into the high–security facility of a woman who was crazy or wanted me dead or both.
Together we passed into the viscous embrace of the large wall of glass. It felt just like I remembered from other times. Moving through glass warmed and calmed you. Like placing cold hands in a basin of tepid water. Like a hug from Sylvia. Like Will’s lips on mine.
I tucked the last thought away, hoping Will felt distracted by the sensation of slipping through the glass. Gently, the window released us back into the air of the building’s interior.
How do we both know where we’re going ? Will asked.
I don’t know. It’s weird, I replied.
Maybe it’s ‘cause we can see with each other’s eyes when we’re connected like this. Like, I see your eyes focusing on a particular corridor, and mine follow suit, and then that’s just where it feels right to go, he wrote.
Turn off your inner–scientist, Will. Let’s get this done.
I was seeing flashes from my previous incarceration. I didn’t feel exactly scared by it, but it wasn’t pleasant, either. Don’t worry, I’m fine , I typed to Will. Just remembering.
It’s nearly impossible to feel scared when you’re invisible, Will wrote. I made a few … errors of judgment coming solid in front of my dad because of how invincible I felt.
Arriving, we paused in front of Dr. Gottlieb’s laboratory.
Ready ? asked Will.
Together we passed through the sawdust–dryness of her wood–veneered door. I understood now what flour felt like, coursing through a sieve. The lab lay in near darkness. Emergency exit signs and computer lights glowed and created an eerie range of Christmas–colored lighting throughout the room.
Let’s start in her office, I wrote.
Hand in hand, we glided across the laboratory floor, our pace now slowed to an ordinary walk. We paused at the office door for half a second, and then sifted through. Another mouthful of sawdust–dryness.
Jackpot! wrote Will, directing his gaze to a bank–style vault behind her desk that ran from floor to ceiling. That should be interesting to pass through .
It was thicker than a regular door. A metallic flavor coursed through my nose and mouth as we slipped through. I pushed back ugly memories of my mouth, full of blood, of Helga’s henchman poised to strike once more.
As we tried to pass to the far side of the vault door, we discovered something frustrating. Immediately behind the door sat shelves that extended to the door. Without any illumination, we could still sense the solid masses of shelving. Beyond the shelves the back wall of the vault pressed, followed by the outer wall of the building. Each time we tried to walk through to an area where we could stand and solidify, we found ourselves outside under the cloudy night sky.
This sucks, wrote Will.
No matter how hard we tried to find a “room” behind the vaulted door, we couldn’t. Eventually we admitted what we knew: there was no “room,” only shelving. We couldn’t solidify inside the vault. On our third pass back through the vault, I recognized two scents besides the metallic