Page 86 of Atlas of Unknowable Things
“It must have been Symon,” Dorian said.
“No, Finn and I were just down here,” I said, searching the room for something to use as a weapon.
“And Symon’s been gone for days,” said Finn.
“He must have come back,” said Dorian.
Again, a whiff of the acrid scent of that extinguished candle, the traitor in our midst. My gaze flitted to the strange-looking tools on the wall. Slowly I walked over to the harpoon instrument and lifted it off the wall.
“What are you doing?” asked Lexi.
I pointed it at Dorian. “It’s him,” I said. “It’s Dorian.”
He took a step away from me, holding up his hands. “Don’t act crazy.”
“Holy shit, Isabelle,” said Finn. “What are you doing?”
“You did this,” I said to Dorian. “You’re working with them, aren’t you?”
“What are you talking about?” asked Finn, his tone more curious than frantic now.
“You’re being hysterical,” Dorian said.
“You never wanted me to remember the code,” I said. “You don’t want the breach repaired. You want it opened wider. Andonce it became clear that I was the code, your instructions were to kill me. Isn’t that right?”
“Isabelle, please,” said Lexi. “Put that thing down.”
“No, she’s right,” said Aspen. “He put oleander in her tea.”
Lexi shuddered, moved toward him, and then pulled away. “Dorian, is this true? Tell us it isn’t true.”
But he just smiled, his canines slipping below his lip line. “It’s going to happen no matter what you do. If not me, it will be someone else.”
“No.” Lexi fought back tears. “Please tell me this isn’t true.”
“Whatever they’re paying you, it’s not worth it,” said Finn, rounding on him, but Dorian seemed completely calm.
“You think I did this for money? I did this because I’m not an idiot. I saw which way the power was shifting and I went with it. There’s nothing you can do now,” he said. “You might as well join me. I don’t want to turn you in. I really don’t. And I don’t want to have to kill you.”
Finn squared on him and nodded to the harpoon. “It doesn’t look like you’re in a position to negotiate right now, Dorian.”
“Neither are you!” he laughed, almost maniacally. “There is now no way to fix the breach. There’s nothing you can do, so let’s just call it a draw.”
“And what?” I asked. “Let a plague of monsters descend upon the earth? Let them ravage mankind?”
“We have no other option,” he said. “It’s no longer a choice for us to make. Now it’s destiny.”
Lexi began to cry, and a general sense of doom descended on the space. I could feel myself on the edge of giving in to it, too, my arms beginning to sag with the weight of the harpoon. In another life, I might have given in to that urge, but that part of me was gone now. I knew there was something I was missing,some possible solution hovering just beyond my perception. And then I saw it.
“We’ll have to repair it manually,” I said.
Silence snapped through the room like an electrical impulse.
Finn pointed at one of the disemboweled panels, wires splaying out from it, frenzied. “And how do you propose we do that?”
“This isn’t the only entrance,” I said quietly, and I could see the muscles in Dorian’s jaw briefly tighten. “There’s an old entrance. The one the ancestors used.”
“No,” said Aspen. “There isn’t. This is the only one.”
