Boucher's World: Emergent Page 5

  Chapter Two

  THEY STOPPED IN FRONT OF THE HOUSE. Now that they’d arrived, Jade saw it was a tiny, dingy white cottage, and it looked deserted.

  Probably abandoned because of the nearby Spot, she thought.

  The Dim Spots roamed and if one wandered onto an occupied building, the residents would suddenly find themselves outside with no way to get back in until the Spot moved on. If it moved. Then, whoever lived there would hurriedly remove their belongings before it came back. This fact had not been known at first so a number of houses and buildings had been built close to the Dome wall in the beginning. All had eventually been abandoned.

  Jade was surprised this one was still standing after all this time. Maybe the Spot had only recently moved on, or - more likely - had covered it off and on over the years. A number of old buildings had been preserved that way.

  They could see no movement behind the grime bespattered windows and the house had a definite aura of emptiness.

  “Crap. Well, we’re here, now. We might as well knock,” she said grumpily as she trudged up onto the porch. She wasn’t holding out any hope of finding anyone, though.

  She raised her hand and rapped sharply on the door, stiffening when it gave under her fist and slowly swung open.

  “Um, anybody home?” she called, peering into the shadowy opening. “Hello?” No answer. It was suddenly very quiet, as if the whole world had decided to pause at that exact moment.

  Creepy, she thought. She hesitated, not sure if she really wanted to go in.

  Tally side-stepped around her, stuck his nose in the door and sniffed.

  he said, impatiently, He chuckled at the look of surprise on her face.

  How’d he know she was dying to go shopping? And thinking about Reece?

  Ugh! My thoughts must’ve been leaking - again.

  She gave a rueful smile. She was going to have to crack down and get in more practice on holding her shields in place.

  She followed him in. They stopped just inside the door and looked around the small, featureless, empty room.

  The floor was covered in dust so thick it was hard to tell exactly what it was made of, though she thought it might be quana wood planks. She could see footprints crisscrossing through the dust, and bare spaces where it looked as if something may have been sitting at one point. Two grimy windows filtered the rays from the sun, leaving the room in near twilight.

  There was a closed door directly ahead leading to either a closet or another room. The tracks led over there too, but it was obvious that whoever the prints belonged to was no longer around. Probably just someone who’d discovered the cottage fairly recently and had gone in to see if anything was there.

  Jade scanned around, looking for another door, but there wasn’t one.

  Another room then, she decided about the door.

  The thick layer of dust muffled their steps as they walked over to it.

  Not wanting to warn the mouse, she switched to mind-speak and asked,

  replied Tally with relish.

  He really liked this part of his job. He was focused and ready for the chase.

  Jade turned the knob. The door opened easily, noiselessly.

  Tally padded swiftly through the doorway as she un-slung her pack and eased out a pest cage. Good thing she hadn’t just taken the kit and the tabs…

  She heard a sharp squeak and rushed in just in time to see a small, brownish gray form springing through a large window in the back wall with Tally right on its tail, diving after it…and disappearing. Literally.

  She stumbled to a stop in the middle of the room, mouth open, staring with shock at the window. Her pack slid out of her hands and thumped to the floor, followed by the cage. She didn’t notice. She blinked her eyes rapidly. She couldn’t have just seen what she thought she saw. She swallowed hard, mouth suddenly dry.

  She stood there for a moment, then crept - cautiously - to the window.

  It was a tall window, starting at the ceiling, going all the way down to the floor and was about three and a half feet wide. Easy to step through. Or fall through. She could see…a lot of nothing inside the window frame.

  She looked frantically around the dim room.

  Maybe he jumped in another direction, she lied to herself.

  Just as in the first room, there was dust all over the floor. There was another - normal appearing - window in the wall on the left, just as occluded by grime as the two in the front room, turning the light from the afternoon sun murky. She checked to the right. A closed door.

  Um, no. He didn’t come this way, she thought, still dazed.

  There were several dilapidated cardboard boxes stacked haphazardly in one corner, and she could just make out some of the same footprints as in the other room and faint, tiny tracks leading from one of the boxes disappearing right at the blank window. And Tally’s tracks going straight to the window. Where he had disappeared.

  She fought a sudden urge to wail for her mother. She tried to think.

  Her mind spinning, she sent as strongly as she could: She got an immediate reply.

  Tally sounded as he always did when he had one of the little culprits on the run: euphoric and pleased with himself. He so enjoyed the chase.

  Jade let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Relief flooded through her: he was safe. But where in Earth’s name was he? She could feel him a short distance away, but she couldn’t see him. The window still showed a blank nothingness.

  She edged to her left; she definitely wasn’t ready to go through there yet.

  She braced herself with an arm against the wall and slowly, with just a slight tremor, she reached out and shoved her right arm through. She felt no resistance as her arm disappeared into nothingness. She could feel the warmth of the sun on her skin along with a slight breeze. Ice crept up her spine, and unnerved, she snatched her arm back.

  Without warning, Tally leapt back in.

  She shrieked and scrambled back from the window, falling on her butt for the second time that day. She sat on the dust covered floor, heart pounding wildly.

  Tally, holding the mouse carefully in his mouth, trotted over to her and asked in bewilderment,

  She stared at him, eyes wide and mouth open, and pointed at the window.

  He turned to look and went very still. He almost dropped the limp mouse.

  he managed to send, still staring at the window.

  Jade remembered she had dropped it and scrambled on hands and knees over the filthy floor to where her pack and the cage lay.

  Tally padded over and dropped the mouse into her hand. She looked down at the little grayish brown rodent.

  He appeared to be okay, just passed out as Tally had said. She turned him over to check his bar code and couldn’t find it. She carefully flipped him over a couple of times. Maybe it was in a different place on his tiny little body. Nope. Nada. No little blue bar code on his belly or anywhere else.

  Where was it? Without that bar code, how was the boss going to determine where to ship him back to? This was getting even weirder.

  She expanded the cage and put the mouse in, activating hiber-sleep by sliding the latch shut.

  Her mouth was still dry and her throat felt dusty. She swallowed before asking, as calmly as she could, “What happened when you went out the window? It looked as if you just disappeared into nothing! Almost scared my toes off!”

  Tally looked at her in consternation.

  he answered. he grumbled.

  He shrugged. - he dipped his head toward the window - he finished.

  Jade digested this information. She was beginning to feel a little calmer. “You feel fine, right?”

  He nodded.

  She hesitated a moment, then climbed to her feet, swiped vaguely at the dust on her pants and walked over to the window. She took a deep breath, held it, and stuck her head through. Just as before, there was no resistance.

&nbs
p; The woods sprang suddenly into view. With amazement, she studied the vicinity. There was the stream Tally mentioned, some yards away across an expanse of grassy, overgrown lawn, downhill from the cottage. She let her breath out.

  Looks pretty normal, like a pleasant place to have a picnic, she thought absently.

  She glanced down and noted a porch there. She looked back up and saw the Dome wall was quite near, only a short distance from the other side of the stream. And, in the wall...

  She found herself standing on the porch. Her heart was pounding wildly again and she was having trouble breathing.

  A door! Her mind was struggling to understand what she was seeing. No one had ever been able to locate a door in the Dome. Untold numbers had tried to find an exit to the outside since the Big Sleep over two thousand years ago. Over the years, numerous people had disappeared while searching for one - her father among them. Surely what she was seeing couldn’t possibly be real. Surely it was just an illusion. It looked like a door, though. Just sitting there. In the wall.

  Head spinning, she started down the steps to the yard and froze when she heard someone yell her name. It took her a moment to realize it was Tally. She stepped back up on the porch.

  Tally had been sitting beside the pack watching as Jade went over to the window. He hadn’t anticipated her suddenly shoving her head out. When she did, it appeared to him she was standing there headless, then she took a step and disappeared altogether.

  Startled, he sprang to his feet and dashed out after her, yelling her name aloud as he ran. He had been so focused on the chase at the time that the state of the window hadn’t registered until Jade pointed it out. Now, she had disappeared.

  “Jade!” he cried, in that throaty, yowly, high pitched voice he hated using, “What are you doing?” He almost ran into her as he leapt onto the porch. He skidded to a stop. “What’s going on?” he asked, still vocalizing.

  Jade, still in a state of utter disbelief at seeing the door, looked at Tally with mild surprise at hearing him speak. He didn’t do it often.

  “Tally,” she said, distractedly, “You’re vocalizing.” She immediately disregarded it, and asked, “Do you see it, too?”

  At his look of puzzlement, she pointed toward the Dome wall.

  He looked in that direction and sucked in his breath. His eyesight wasn’t as good as hers in daylight but he could see the door. Or what appeared to be a door.

  he asked, back to mind-speak. He looked around. Everything appeared normal.

  He hopped down off the porch and turned around to look at the cottage. It looked normal, too. He could still see clearly into the room through the window from this side. He walked around the right and saw a haziness starting at the side of the porch, continuing off into the distance. He caught a whiff of almonds.

  Jade came up beside him. “Gods! This is really, really creepy!” she exclaimed. “We are on the other side of the Spot. Coming out the window seems to be the way through.”

  She turned back to the Dome wall and made an easy decision. “Tally, I’ve got to check out that door thing!” She hurried down to the stream.

  Tally took off after her.