The door opened. Nate saw that Celia and Ted had taken up hidden positions. Nate peered through the coin. With Peak Performance still augmenting his senses, locating Arcadeland was no big trick.
“Utcha,” he said softly.
Nate felt like he was getting turned inside out. His head seemed to retract down into his belly, and his legs seemed to withdraw up into his head. Quickly, painlessly, he collapsed down to a single point.
When he expanded back to his regular size, Nate was standing on a curb, part of the way down the block from Arcadeland. He felt proud that he had landed so close to his destination. The buildings looked how they should, and the street, and the cars. But the planter boxes were empty except for dirt and some snarled, dead vegetable matter. A closer look revealed that the cars were empty as well. A combination of denim shorts, a T-shirt, a baseball hat, a wristwatch, sneakers, and socks strolled along the sidewalk, holding a leash attached to an empty collar, as though both dog and owner were invisible.
The sky was the oddest part. Instead of clouds, or a sun, or blueness, or starry black, the sky looked like part of the domed chamber that housed Uweya. Nate was not staring up from the Earth toward the immensity of space. He was staring up from a large globe in a well-lit room.
Nate slipped the stone coin into his pocket. He was relieved to find that he really could still fly. He soared over to Arcadeland, alighting near the front doors. A few sets of clothes pushed the doors open from inside, then walked toward the parking lot.
Nate pulled a door open. It felt no different from interacting with a normal door. He walked into the arcade.
Clothes stood playing arcade games. Clothes manned the food counter. Clothes threw basketballs for points. Clothes aimed the guns at the shooting gallery. The scene was very eerie, as if everyone in the world had obliviously become invisible.
Nate watched a set of clothes at a table lift a hamburger. A bite of the hamburger disappeared. The food was not visible as it was chewed or swallowed. Once ingested, it vanished.
Nate took out the simple map Ziggy had drawn. He studied it for a moment, comparing it to his surroundings, then flew to the appropriate EMPLOYEES ONLY door. He found it locked.
Of course it was locked! Now what?
Nate looked around for something he might use to break it down. Then again, maybe there was a subtler way. After all, nobody could see him.
He knocked softly. He knocked harder. Then he knocked really hard. He started beating the door with both hands. He kicked it with the sole of his shoe, making it shudder.
A set of clothes came hustling over. Nate scooted out of the way. A key came out and was inserted into the lock, and the door opened. Obviously the employee thought that somebody was stuck on the far side. Nate recognized that just as he could see no people, he could also hear no voices. He wondered if the employee was speaking, perhaps calling to the person who had battered the door. The set of clothes passed through the door, checking down the hallway beyond.
Nate used the opportunity to slip through the doorway, flying over the clothes of the employee. Leaving the clothes behind, Nate soared down the hall. He could feel the effects of Peak Performance wearing thin. He would have to be careful with his last stick. It was his only hope of making it through the obstacle course within Mt. Diablo.
Keeping an eye on his map, Nate found his way to the stairway door. Again, it was locked. Nate tried the same routine. He knocked softly at first, then harder, then he pounded it relentlessly.
This time a set of clothes opened the door from the far side. Nate recognized the clothes from that morning. It was Conner! That made sense. Conner had probably been posted to watch the stairway. When he heard the commotion, he had come to investigate.
Straightening his body, Nate flew over Conner though the top of the doorway. Conner passed beyond the doorway, turning to look up and down the hall. Then he hurried back through the door, shut it, and locked it. He rushed down the stairs. Nate followed.
Conner used a key on the door at the bottom of the stairs. Nate wondered whether they had kept all of these doors locked before last night’s intrusion. When Conner opened the door, Nate darted through the top of it.
Below him, Conner paused, apparently conversing with another person. Nate didn’t recognize the second person’s clothes. After a moment, Conner started down the hall, striding briskly. He was going the same direction Nate wanted to travel.
Nate felt an excited flutter of hope. He had considered trying to blindside Conner with a heavy object in order to take his keycard to Jonas White’s sanctum. But what if Conner was voluntarily heading to the sanctum to report the strange disturbance? Nate kept checking his map as Conner kept making the correct turns.
Sure enough, Nate found himself drifting above and behind Conner as he made his way down the hall toward a sturdy metal door. The metal door matched up with the location of the sanctum on the graph-paper map.
“Keep going, you brainless gorilla,” Nate mouthed, not daring to speak the words even though he felt sure Conner wouldn’t be able to hear them.
Conner paused at the door, looking back down the hall as his wallet came out of his back pocket. A plastic card was removed. Conner swiped the card, then tugged the heavy door open.
Just as Nate was about to slip over Conner and into the sanctum, he heard footfalls from behind. The rhythm was strange. Although each step sounded abnormally loud, there was too much time between them.
Swiveling in the air, Nate saw Katie come tearing around the corner at the end of the hall. Her eyes locked on Nate as she came bounding forward, devouring nearly twenty feet per stride. Her normally immaculate hair was disheveled, with part of it slashed away parallel to a clotted gash along her cheek. Scratches crisscrossed her face, the tip of her nose was gone, and it looked like wild animals had savaged her bodysuit. Her left arm was missing at the elbow. Despite her many injuries, no fresh blood flowed.
Apparently responding to a signal from within the sanctum, Conner moved to close the door. Nate knifed through just before it slammed shut.
Conner had shut himself and Katie out of the sanctum. For the moment, Nate was alone with a crowd of wax figures and a fancy black robe with gold embroidery that could only belong to Jonas White. The black robe stood near the wax figure of Katie Sung. The wax figure had injuries to match Katie’s, including the scratches on her face and the missing forearm. Needles of varying size protruded all over the wax figure, and Jonas continued to insert more.
Nate saw the jade urn in the recess on the far side of the room. It was the only object that fit the description. He flew to the recessed shelf, grabbed the top of the vase, and yanked.