Revolving Door: Volume 2
Chapter 31: City of Smoke and Mirrors - Denouement
Content warning (may contain spoilers)
This chapter contains depictions of vomiting.
The lights of houses glow through the muddling gray. Adelaide can no longer remember the taste of berries, and all she wants now are food and warmth.
As her tablet phone's clock ticks to 7:30pm, she comes upon a bin in the dark, the corner of a pizza box peeking from inside. In a past life, she might have worried about the state of its contents, but today she is too starved to care.
She yanks the box from under the plastic flap, and flips it open to find a wedge-shaped slice covered in wrinkled discs of meat. It is greasy to her touch. She shoves it into her mouth, salivating for the sting of salt and spice. As she chews, her feet leave the bin and hurry her on, on and on, which way she doesn't care, as long as it's away from home.
All this while, Adelaide finds the inside of her mind crumbling into increasing disarray, as she wonders where Felix has gone. Has he left the house? Surely he has.
She stumbles to a halt on the edge of someone’s front lawn, and slips her tablet phone from her pocket.
“Freddie,” she whispers, shivering. “Show me Felix's profile.”
“I found Felix in your friend l—” Adelaide clamps her palm over the speaker, glancing over her shoulder at the misty window across the yard.
Tapping into his profile, Adelaide's eyes wander over the row of buttons beside his name, and selects the speech bubble.
felix where are you?
Her breath catches as she taps send.
Before she has closed the window, a new reply lights up on the screen:
I'm as far as I care to go.
But I can come find you. Are you safe?
Her shoulders sag, and she replies: i think so, in a neighbourhood but away from eyes
Perfect. Stay put, do you know what street you're on?
She glances across the street for a sign.
simpson drive
Felix spends a few seconds typing, then his answer comes through: You got far! Half an hour's walking from my location, but I shall be there. Do not move!
Adelaide does not move, not even to adjust her posture. If it will help Felix find her faster, then she will do as told.
The minutes tick by—five, ten, crawling like spilled tar. Felix is still not here. Every second she stares at the street lights, she tries to believe, like she did in that penthouse apartment when the lights had lit up her floor.
Her joints grow stiff from standing like a scarecrow, and she cannot tell if the blurring of her vision is from the fog, exhaustion or tears. At long last she lets herself sink to the sidewalk paving, and hugs her legs close, though it does little to warm the chill away.
Staring up through the humid air, she feels the weariness weigh on her body. This is the only life awaiting her: a forever-after of living on the run.
At least, when she was living in the lab, no one was hounding her every footstep. No one toiled to track down her scent, to push her out of every place she dared settle in.
Now, she can never belong anywhere again—anywhere but that room they built for her.
Adelaide buries her face in her lap and fights her tears. The stale bin pizza sits wrong in her belly. “You should have left me in the room,” she croaks, shaking in the bite of the wind. “Why did you do this to me? Why did you do this to me?”
She rambles on and on into incoherence for several minutes, grasping at her knees and the linty fabric of her leg-warmers. Is this how it is to live in the world below her penthouse? How is it worse than captivity?
Then, footsteps. And the rattle of wheels—to her left, down the road, soaring towards the houses.
Her throat clams up. The steps hasten closer, breaking into a jog. Eyes wide, she looks.
In the same moment, a golden searchlight glares upon her, lighting every speck in a circle on the sidewalk, filling her eyes with such fire that she gasps.
She blinks, heart leaping to her throat as she tries to make out if the silhouette between the streetlights is who she hopes, or if the police have found her at last, and her brief flight is finally at end.
“There you are!” comes a voice she knows.
“Felix?” Adelaide chokes, springing to her feet.
Felix flies to a stop before her, his coat trailing after him. He smiles even while he catches his breath, disheveled and covered in fragments of leaves and twigs.
She dashes over and flings her arms around him, trembling with the relief of his warmth. “Felix! I thought I’d never see you again…” Her voice wobbles with tears, and she clings and clings because it makes her feel a little less worn down.
“Oh, er, good to see you too,” he says. This time, he makes no reprimand—in fact, he returns the gesture haltingly, a hand laid on her shoulder. “How are you?”
“I’m bad.” These are the only words she can find. Stumbling back, she notices dirt stains on his blue shirt, and twigs and fibers. “Were you crawling through the scrub to get here?”
Felix wrings his hands and glances aside. “Well, let us say the way here was…well off the beaten track. You have a fine talent for losing pursuers, it’ll serve you well.”
“I’m sorry…you didn’t have to do that.” She watches him attentively, then reaches out and picks a twig out of his hair. She lets it fall to the pavement; they both watch it go. Then she pulls out a leaf. A bit of an anther. His hair could really use some combing.
He meets her eye, seeming either startled or confused—and it makes her squirm in a way she can’t pinpoint. “All’s well that ends well,” he murmurs, and before she can remove anything else from his hair, he gently maneuvers her hand away. The light around them glows brighter, revealing the sidewalk for two feet in each direction. “Let us go now. It's only a matter of time till your father reports you to the police…but we shall worry about that once we've had dinner. Turn off your PalmNote for now, it'll give them one thing less to track.”
She nods mutely and does as told. Meanwhile Felix glances at his own device, the map glowing on the screen. “There is a gas station a few streets down, we could pick up a meal there.”
Adelaide twiddles her fingers. “I’m not hungry.”
“How could you not be?”
“I ate…”
“Here? What did you…”
She glances guiltily at a bin as they pass.
“Addie…” The nickname makes her eyes widen. “If…I may call you that…”
Of course, he heard her mother call her that. “Yes, you may…”
“...you know that discarded scraps aren’t fit for consumption?”
Her head sinks. “I was just…so hungry.”
Felix sighs. “Fair enough, you can’t uneat what you’ve eaten.”
They trudge on through the alternating light and shadow, Adelaide in a growing haze. Five minutes later, as they reach the edge of the suburb, the unpleasant roil of her stomach becomes chilling nausea. She stumbles to a stop, bends double at the roadside and vomits.
Her eyes and throat burn, and she starts to wail, wiping her mouth on the backs of her hands.
“Oh, dear God,” she hears Felix murmur. His hand extends a handkerchief into her view. She stumbles backward against him, taking the proffered handkerchief to scour her face and hands clean. He offers his arm, and the deepest look of pity.
Her vision spins. She crumples the fabric into a ball and snatches for his elbow.
Adelaide doesn’t notice when Felix drapes his coat over her shoulders, but she eventually realises that she is no longer shivering.
She clings onto Felix’s arm as they pick their way towards the BP station, their luggage bag trailing after them in a whir of wheels. Its sterile white-green glow seeps onto the walls of the neighbouring houses, announcing its presence above the prickly trees.
They stumble through the peeling pillars and sliding doors, Adelaide’s vision swimming so that everything looks like a dream of sorts. She’s only vaguely aware of it when the service robot rolls up to them with a bottle of water, a few protein bars and two chicken wraps, and her companion taps his card on the reader.
“Addie,” Felix says, sounding almost as tired as she is by now. In the baring white light at the edge of the station, he hands her the water bottle and a P&E protein bar, both too clean and shiny in her grimy hands. She bursts into a flurry of thanks, only noticing that her throat is parched when she gulps the water down, droplets spilling down her face.
“So…” she mumbles as she caps it again, watching as he leans on the luggage handle and demolishes a wrap. “What are we doing next?”
Lifting his face from his meal, he says, “Is there anyone else whom you’d trust to harbour us?”
At this, Adelaide withdraws slightly. “I don’t want to be wrong again. I messed that up the last time.”
“Don’t you worry about that, my dear. Family is…unique, in how we judge their character. Do you remember any friends?”
“Yes.”
“Oh?”
“There was Lea. She was my best friend—she was my only friend, actually—we used to go on little adventures together. I don’t know that she’s still here, in this city, or in this state even. But she was…she was always good to me.”
“Lea. Surname?” Felix has pulled up the social network search bar.
“Lea Johnson.”
“Lillie, find Lea Johnson.”
“Certainly!” declares Lillie. “I found two hundred and seventy profiles for the name Lea Johnson.”
Felix tilts the screen towards Adelaide; she leans to watch as he scrolls, searching every icon for the girl she remembers, with dark curly hair and a predilection for the stars.
“Wait, stop.” Felix stops scrolling. Onscreen is a profile with the name Lea “Twilight” Johnson. When Adelaide lays eyes upon the photograph, it’s like a jigsaw puzzle click together in her head. Her hair is dyed indigo at the tips, and the image itself is decorated by a frame of blue stars, but she would know that face from among a thousand.
Adelaide points at that icon. “That’s her. Lea Twilight.” Under her name is her city: San Francisco.
“Well, how serendipitous. How shall we proceed?” Felix stares at the profile. “I’d think it wise to question her, before we show our hand. Of course, that is assuming she even dignifies a stranger with a reply.”
Adelaide calculates for a minute, and then holds out her hand. “May I pretend to be you for a minute?”
Felix glances at her, and then hands the device over.
She taps Lea’s profile and then the speech bubble beside her icon. Beneath her name, her status currently appears to be “Offline.” All the better, then. She taps on the text field, and begins to draft a message.
Lea, how are you? I’m contacting you about the subject of Adelaide Moore, the recently escaped laboratory subject. I understand you were close friends with her in the past. As a private investigator entrusted with this matter, I have intelligence suggesting she may be seeking you out. May we discuss?
Felix is watching as Adelaide types the words. She hesitates over the send button for a minute, before closing her eyes and tapping it. The new message, framed in grey, sits out in the open. Her heart feels like it might burst.
“I couldn’t have done better,” whispers her companion over her shoulder.
Lea’s status flips to Online.
An animated speech bubble pops up at the bottom.
Adelaide shrieks. Felix lays a hand on her shoulder, but he, too, is leaning in, both pairs of eyes trained on the grey bubble as it is replaced with:
if this is some weird phisihing scam then get lost
why the hell would i wanna help you hunt her down anyway
fuck off
They glance at each other. Adelaide’s mind is racing faster than her heart, a hundred possibilities springing from this message, and a thousand possible replies. But most of those, she decides, can wait.
She simply writes:
Lea! Sorry for the weird intro—I couldn’t be sure.
Can we meet on Telegraph Hill tomorrow? The place where we went to stargaze when we were seven? You remember that place, right?
This time, the speech bubble doesn’t pop up. Adelaide goes breathless. The gas station lights and the bare concrete floor and the tire marks spin in her peripheral vision.
After five minutes, Lea is typing again.
oh my god. no way.
what time?
The glow of entrance spotlights at the BART station welcome them out of the dark. When she glimpses her reflection in the perspex signage, Adelaide sees a different face yet again. They pass the gantry with paper tickets—a holdover from a past era, but ever necessary—and ask around for directions until the Blue-N hisses into the station.
In the seat behind the door, Felix slides the luggage under the chairs, while Adelaide settles into the window seat. As the hum of the engine crescendos, lights flash over them, to the rhythm of the clattering wheels.
“I could sleep for days,” she whispers.
“You could catch a few winks here,” he replies, glancing again at his tablet phone screen, where the route is drawn, a blue line connecting circular nodes together. “It’s half an hour before we alight.”
She glances out the window and watches the pipes of the tunnel flash by. So much has happened so quickly, after years of silence. Scenes flash through her thoughts like a fast forward reel. She lets her head sink against his shoulder, and closes her eyes.
“Ah, Addie, I don’t know if…”
“Huh?” Her eyes flutter open. “Sorry, I can move if…”
He shakes his head. “It’s nothing.”
“I have a question…where are we gonna stay tonight?”
“We’ll find a hotel. We can keep our cover for one night. I’ll make sure of it…”
Before he’s finished speaking, her eyelids have drooped shut again, and the quiet rattle of the train wheels, and the warmth of her companion, lull her to sleep.
*
The screech of the subway as it brakes at their destination station, and the strobing lights that it brings, throw Adelaide from her slumber.
The underground escalators are gray and tarnished, but the streets above are polished glass—not silent even at this hour, although the screens have dimmed to throbbing dark shades. Through the smoke-heavy air, hotel names gleam down at them, some advertising their rates from unlit shopfronts, others showing no more than a gilded logo.
“Fancy any of these for lodging?” says Felix as they pass in front of the polished facades.
She looks about. “They all look the same to me,” she replies, then points at the one to their left. A golden plaque declares its name: the Acropolis. “But I don’t feel like walking anymore. How about this one?”
She is alarmed, briefly, to hear the thoughtless demand in her own voice, before it is allayed by his equally unbothered reply— “Let us see if they have vacancies.” He waits by the automatic door for her to enter, before tailing her into the air conditioning with their blue luggage bag in tow.
It’s a slightly glitzier one than the last, one for the heart of the city. Dark marble reflects her false face back at her, Felix’s coat about her shoulders. She watches herself with suspicion while he handles the formalities at the counter. When she frowns, her reflection does not. The lobby is otherwise silent, not even muzak to fill the frigid gaps.
Their feet tap on the marble until they enter the carpeted elevator lobby. The perfumed lift closes its doors to engulf them in a kaleidoscopic vision of blue LED particles, rippling like water.
“What do you think of those?” asks Felix in a whisper, waving at the screen and its reflections.
“I wish they were brighter. I can barely see anything.”
He waves a hand, and they shift to green, and then to brilliant gold, and she can see that their patterns are warping around him, just a little. The way he does this—gives in to her demands—makes a lump appear in her throat.
Their room is halfway down a gray hallway on the fifteenth floor, and when Felix unlocks it with the keycard and pushes the door open, Adelaide studies it intently. It’s bigger than the lab’s penthouse apartment, and perfumed, with petals scattered on the king bed. A ceiling-high window looks over the sleepless city, lights studding the dark like gems in velvet.
For minutes, Adelaide wanders through the room and stares down at the streets, feeling the cold radiate off the glass. In the background, Felix’s reflection lays the luggage bag down and opens it like a clam shell.
Gradually, her eyes glaze over to the lights, and she begins to watch him instead—in the glass, then over her shoulder. He picks out a few articles of clothing, and fishes his jonquil Cel—now a couple of leaves balder than before—from his pocket. He drops a small bottle of shower gel and chases it halfway across the room. She laughs under her breath.
When he disappears into the bathroom, she finally wanders over to the bed. Sitting on the edge of the creaseless blanket, she tears off her sweater, tosses it onto the ornate armchair by the bed, and sinks onto the bedding. Her eyes droop shut to the gentle rustle of water in the next room.