Revolving Door: Volume 3
Touchdown
“Searching for us!” Felix exclaims. “Why, were you sent by my father?”
Vesper chuckles. “Your father? No. Well…it is a frightfully long story, but perhaps Orobelle is the best one to explain it.”
He turns to Adelaide, and whereas he has done his utmost to obscure his surprise, she wears it plainly, her face slack and eyes glittering. “Orobelle?” she asks.
“Duchess Orobelle. Though I reckon Supreme Overlord suits her better. I'm here under orders to take you to meet her.”
“A duchess! Well, I don't see why not…we haven't any other plans. But, er, Addie? What do you think?”
Adelaide glances from one face to the other. “I guess I don't really know what else we could be doing right now.”
“Why, then, lead the way, Captain Lovelace,” Felix says, and with a small nod, Vesper takes them out the door.
The guard at the booth waves out the warehouse's strange arrivals with the sort of boredom that makes Felix think he witnesses this at least thrice a day. As they march out of the storehouse into the glowing afternoon, he muses upon the city unfolding before him. San Francisco is as hilly as it is in the future, the streets presided over by a mix of gas lamps and electrics.
It is warm even in early autumn, yes. It was summer when he left.
“If I may be so rude, Captain,” he murmurs, “are you from here?”
Vesper doesn't turn. “First of all, please call me Vesper,” she replies. “Second of all, no—I am not from San Francisco nor from this world.”
“Not this world?” Adelaide gasps. “Are you from mine, then?”
She finally looks over her shoulder, eyes flicking between the two. “Unlikely, but possible. What year is it where you're from?”
“2060, I think.”
“‘Fraid that doesn't sound like mine,” she replies. The way Vesper speaks is strait-laced, matching her gait, with a reined-in West Country lilt. “Where I'm from, it's 1945.”
“There's a third world?”
“There are more than three. I have seen four, and none of them include yours.”
As the words roll over Felix, he stares, heart racing as if the earth has fallen away, endless universes drifting beneath his feet. “Then you also arrived here by means of your own machine?” he asks.
“Well, not quite. Orobelle has someone under her employ who carries us between universes.”
“A person?”
“Oh, yes. You'll meet her in a few minutes.”
*
As Vesper walks the two newcomers through the now-familiar streets, she uncovers the story of their past weeks—how Felix hails from London in this current universe and became a passenger of the Tunnel Machine, a device of his father's dreaming. How the machine's core function—tearing a tunnel through the folds of space—did not account for the existence of other universes and left him stranded in the wrong one. How Adelaide was a prisoner for eleven years for gene altering powers that her world feared too much to leave in the open, and that she has chosen to flee it for a different one.
This conversation soon leads her to the discovery that in this world's London, the boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea have been merged into one. “And the rich twa—” she pauses upon realising that Felix is probably one of them— “the citizens took that lying down?”
“Oh, not at all, there was a proper uproar,” he replies. “The redrawing of boundaries was an administrative convenience. No one in the boroughs was especially pleased about it. But as it goes, the law was passed anyway, and all the grumbling and protestation was for naught.”
“Guess that city's the same in every world after all,” she sighs. “Well, as far as strange powers go, I am pleased to say you'll be in good company, if you should join us.”
“Join you?” Adelaide whispers.
“Yes. In short, our little duchess is amassing something of a platoon of personal protectors. She can better explain. She has a knack for it.”
“Is the duchess the, uh, team leader?”
Vesper chuckles. “She is the axis of the multiverse, thank you very much.”
The doors of the boutique hotel are propped open for the afternoon. Walking right by the lift doors without so much as a glance, Vesper marches them up two flights of stairs, waiting at the top for her companions to catch up. Then up at room 3A, she knocks on the door.
“Is that Vesper?” comes the duchess' voice from inside.
“Orobelle, I found them. You were right, they were at the cage.”
“Perfect timing! Get them a room.”
Vesper turns to the guests. “Will you share a room?” she says. “We're all full otherwise.”
Felix turns to Adelaide. “What do you think?”
“If we share, it'll save us money.”
“Oh, worry not about matters of money. I need only make a withdrawal from the bank, and that should set us right.”
“I want to share a room,” she replies.
He pauses. “Then…let us do so.”
Vesper notes a frightened clinginess in Adelaide's voice. “If we needn't finance your lodgings,” Vesper says, raising her voice, “I'm sure Orobelle wouldn't mind, either.”
“Not at all!” the duchess answers from inside.
“Well, I can certainly organise that,” Felix says. Excusing himself, he begins back towards the stairs, and Adelaide, glancing between one and the other, finally decides to do nothing, lowering her eyes to her shoes.
When they return from making their bookings, Orobelle is standing at her door. Adelaide thought she sounded young, but now she can see that the duchess is no older than twelve, pale as ivory and wearing a number of ribbons and frills that she has only ever seen on a doll.
With someone Adelaide assumes to be her retainer watching over her shoulder, she inspects them both with her nose to her golden instrument, then declares that they are in fact the ones she has been looking for.
“A free gift,” she calls them. “We're only one short now! Let us take a few days' repose. What do you think, Dorian?”
“I think a rest would not be amiss, my Duchess,” he answers with a voice as gentle as his manners.
No sooner than she retreats back into her room does Adelaide leap when an arm encircles her shoulders, pulling her and Felix into a huddle. “I came as soon as I heard we had new recruits!” declares the bespectacled newcomer, poking his head between them. “Hello, I'm Hong Yi—welcome to the team.”
Recruits? Adelaide spends just a second pondering the choice of words. He is just a little taller than she, with tan skin and dark hair, rectangular glasses perched on his nose—and something about the way he speaks feels warm, like home, though they have never met.
“Ah, hello,” Felix answers meanwhile. “Felix Mercer, pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Hong Yi moves like a whirlwind, sweeping them into the room beside Orobelle's before they can react. They see Vesper yet again, this time reclining in the bed to the right of the door. Up against the facing wall, a second occupant lies staring at the ceiling, though she turns as they enter. To their left, a third lies curled up in slumber.
Vesper props herself up on her arm as Hong Yi guides them to the couch by the bookshelves. “Well, here's the rest of us,” she declares. “Myself, Hong Yi,” she points at each one in turn, “Honourless—that's our universe hopper—and Marcia.”
“Oh yeah, there's one more guy you haven't met,” Hong Yi puts in, nodding at the wall. “Artur is next door. He's probably just shy. Anyway, how are you? I heard you landed in the cage, too.”
With those gazes eagerly taking them in, Adelaide and Felix introduce themselves each in turn. And indeed, every single one of them has abilities akin to their own. Vesper fires an electric arc at the doorknob. Hong Yi lifts the desk with one finger. Eventually, Artur does poke his head in through the door and give his name in a single word.
“Marcia is asleep right now,” says Hong Yi. “But I think the only thing you need to know is that she recently recovered from rabies. Without a doctor.”
“Wait,” Adelaide breathes. “She did what?”
“Oh yeah…she just administered herself the vaccine with her powers. Basically.” Then he turns to their most recent inductees. “Anyway, I gotta ask. You two have powers, too, right?”
Adelaide halts before replying, but Felix gives an emphatic, “Yes!”
Perhaps he has been spoiling for this chance to show off. Lifting a hand, he swipes it through the air in an arc, and then the room is no more. Instead, it is a dazzling night market on a city street, the details head spinningly clear, though the buildings scatter to blurred specks overhead.
“No way,” Hong Yi whispers. “What's this, photon manipulation?”
As always, the lack of sound gives lie to the vision. “I believe so,” Felix replies.
“So, wait, do you use your powers to prank people?”
“I most certainly do, or—I did. More so when I was at school. But I much prefer to put it to constructive uses. Like making sure Addie isn't caught.” As he says this, the vision collapses, and the bright room returns.
When Hong Yi turns to Adelaide next, she leaps with surprise. “So…how about you?”
She weaves her fingers together. “I…don't know how to demonstrate, it's not that kind of power.”
Hong Yi grins. “You don't have to. What do you do?”
“I guess something like rewriting genes, and changing gene expression,” she answers. “But I mostly just…change myself.”
“For real?”
She nods. “Yeah. I wasn't born with this…hair colour. Or eye colour.”
“No way—I wish I could do that!” he shouts. Adelaide falters into silence. Hong Yi clears his throat. “I mean. Neat! Anyway, thank you for humouring us! We hope you have a pleasant stay with, uh…we don't have a team name.”
“Orobelle's Circus,” Artur mutters, still leaning on the doorframe. He says it in such a deadpan that the rest begin to laugh, except for Adelaide, who nervously smiles in the hopes that it is the right reaction.
“Well, what do you think?” asks Felix as soon as their door is shut behind them.
Adelaide does not speak until she has pulled her green sweater off over her head. “I don't know…everything's happening so fast.”
Felix paces to the window. The two-storey shophouses that form the facing terrace are none too different from the ones he knows.
“They are a lively lot, aren't they?” he says. “They're our people, in the most literal sense of the phrase. And I do believe we are meant to follow them.” He turns back and begins towards her side. “Certainly a way to spend our first hour here.”
It is a minute before Adelaide finally sits down on the bed closer to her.
Felix sighs. “We must recoup our supplies. I left our luggage in your world. And my poor little Cel…you will be missed.” He wanders up to her bedside and takes a seat beside her. “Addie, now that we are in a world that doesn't know you and hasn't ever contrived a theory of genetics…I believe there is no further need for masks. And I hope you feel at ease leaving my side.”
She stares at him, then past him, seeming lost in a world of thought. Then she says, “I never got so far as imagining this. I don't know what I'm meant to do, now.”
“Whatever you like,” he replies, with a trace of a smile. “I shan't be leading you by my whims and fancies any longer. And I hope, if need be, that you won't mind us losing sight of each other once in a while. Not that I dislike your company…” He closes his eyes. “I simply worry that I have let my will overrule yours for too long.”
She scrunches her brow in a frown. “No, you haven't. It's because of you that I even made it here. I'm not choosing to stick close because I'm scared—it's just—I was alone in a room for years, and I don't want to be alone again. Please?”
As she says this, Adelaide's fingers tug on his wrist. Her eyes are awash with desperation, as if she truly believed he might evaporate into thin air right then.
Her hand is colder than he thought it would be. By some reflex, he lays his own upon it.
“Oh, Addie, of course not. If this is what you prefer, then I couldn't possibly deny you.”
Before he has finished saying these words, she has gone rigid. Her gaze barely hangs onto his. A crescendo of confusion, disquiet, darting eyes—then she snatches back her hand as if burned.
She recoils with that same rosy shyness he has been noticing more often. It takes all the temper of his upbringing not to react.
Adelaide says nothing else, and Felix cannot think of a way to ask her what has come over her in these last seconds. She sits frozen in place till he finally rises and occupies himself with searching his coat pockets, pretending not to think too hard.
*
Adelaide's head reverberates with a thousand signals, crashing, interfering, garbling each other. She buries her face in the grey blanket and balls her fingers on the lint.
Don't do that again, she repeats the reprimand in her head. Don't do that again.
When she reads a genome, she perceives every nucleotide not as a letter but as a note in a song. She has tapped into the songs in flowers, in berries, in feathers and fur…but never in humans. She has never let herself, even if she has the chance. She has long lived by that commandment.
Until now. Five minutes ago, when for a vertiginous second she believed Felix was trying to distance himself, their fingers met and, as if she had longed to this whole time, she read him.
…and he was a score open to her rewriting, and her world was reverberating with his code, and her entire being pulsed to his meter and his possibility and suddenly, she wanted to…
She flings her mind away from those thoughts, focusing on the summer warmth of this strange new San Francisco. As she does, she makes an effort to breathe slower.
The room is almost quiet. Felix is doing a good job of not intruding. Her eyes cross the other half of the room: there is a shelf of books along the wall past her feet, its lacquered foliate carvings gleaming with the afternoon sun off the facing roofs. The room is permeated by the perfume of old pulp, safe and sure, comfortable.
The buildings in the window are unfamiliar—few of these remain in her time. There was a fire…she isn't sure if the fire will befall this copy of the city, gobbling the books in its hungry jaws.
This warmth is too gentle to be fire. The window is tall and sunlight floods in through its twelve panes. Broad-leafed trees sway on balconies. The after-images of today are already melting away—police guns, cracking glass, dusty velvet drapes, a brown-haired stranger dragging them into an old city—all coming apart at the edges.
It would be nighttime in her own version of San Francisco. The fears make her ache, but the exhaustion is stronger; her mind begins drifting. She peers at her companion through half-closed eyes. He takes off his vest. She watches guiltily.
Then he settles down on the facing bed and turns to smile at her, perhaps not knowing their eyes are meeting in that moment.
Don't do that again, she thinks, despite everything in her crying for another taste.
By the time evening falls, Marcia knows there is something afoot. She sees a curtain rustle in the dining hall, just on the edge of her view. But when she excuses herself to check, there is no one.
Then, again, as she is settling into the bed facing Honourless’, she thinks she hears gentle footsteps pace the corridor and halt nearby. Thinking it may be one of their companions there to visit, she opens the door—and sees an empty hall.
It is when Dorian starts asking around for his missing key that Marcia decides, at last, that there is a pattern.
Finding the duchess in her room, Marcia speaks to her about these hints she has observed in several different places. The misplaced footprints, the stray crackles, the moving curtains revealing no hiders.
Half expecting Orobelle to dismiss her, Marcia is startled when the duchess’ voice drops to a hush. “Don't let them find out that we know,” she whispers, piercing grey eyes threaded with worry. “I thought the missing key seemed bizarre. I expect that it is I whom they are spying upon. Switch rooms with us tonight. You and Vesper come here. We'll do this quietly.”
They make the switch when the lamps are guttering, with Honourless outside to watch the hallway for strangers. Vesper is apprised of the situation by then. There is a solemn certainty in her eyes that barely softens even as they close the door to the silent corridor. There is too much of a sense of a mission there this evening for any caprices to ensue.
The night is inching up towards 2 A.M. according to the clock in the hallway. Adelaide paces past the doors towards the windows at the end, pulling her arms close. She needs to be anywhere except in the room with Felix.
She pauses at the sitting area at the end of the hall. It looks out the western window onto the wharves, where all the streets are dimmed for the night. She knows it is the west because she remembers maps of this city, even as different as it is here: the coastline where the Presidio's lights end, giving way to the scattered boat lamps in the bridgeless sea beyond.
She walks to the tall armchair and sinks into it—then leaps when a pair of glasses gleams at her from the neighbouring couch.
“Oh! Adelaide!” It is Hong Yi, his face barely lit by the streetlights. “Didn't think I'd see you here at this hour.”
“You too,” she whispers.
“So…any reason you're up and about?”
“I'm anxious.”
He snorts. “That makes both of us.” He clasps his hands together, propping his chin up on his lap.
“What's wrong?”
“I mean, it's kinda silly, but…I've been worrying that Artur doesn't like me.”
Adelaide makes an “o” with her lips. “He seems like a moody person.”
Nodding, Hong Yi leans on one arm of the couch. “Yeah, but I'm pretty sure he's ignoring me on purpose. He barely answers anything I say. And when I got back to the room after dinner, he kinda just…left. The timing was too close for it to be a coincidence.”
Seeing him frown strikes a discordant note in her, even having known him for just a day. “You're a very friendly person,” she replies after some thought. “He might not be used to it.”
“Yeah, you might be right. Except…I don't really know how to stop being…friendly…”
“Sorry, I don't know how to help with that.”
At this, Hong Yi finds it in himself to grin again, and the wrongness of the scene is gone. “Oh, hey, there's no need. I'm honoured you're even listening to me. But enough about that. How about you?”
Beneath Hong Yi's stare, Adelaide swallows. “I, uh, just need to be away from my room, too.”
“Oh? Because of Felix?” She nods. Hong Yi's eyebrows rise. Streetlights glisten in his lenses as he leans in. “I thought you two were friends.”
“Yeah, it's just that today, it got…weird.”
She can barely meet his eye, but when she does, he is watching with a deepening frown. “Did he do something to you?”
She shakes her head. “No. I…I was the one who did something I shouldn't have. This is hard to explain, but earlier on, when we were talking, he touched my hand. And when he did—and this never happens—I started to read his genome. Like I couldn't help myself.”
“Oh, like…with your powers?” She nods. “Then what happened?”
“Please don't judge me…”
“No judgement from me, ever. Promise.”
She takes a deep breath. “I could see all of his genetic code, and I felt this compulsion, like I never have before, to memorise it all, to take it all for myself, and exchange pieces of it with my own—and I knew I could have, and it scared me how much I wanted to, and then I felt gross so I—” She becomes aware that her voice has risen above a whisper, and she feels the blood roar into her head. “Sorry, I feel so ashamed even describing it.”
“Aw, don't be,” he whispers, leaning across the gap to pat her arm. “You didn't discover anything compromising, did you?” She shakes her head. “Well, then, no harm done. And honestly…I think that's the most romantic thing anyone has ever said about genes. Just imagine the pickup lines you could make out of this. ‘Wanna trade genes? I couldn't help noticing you have a recessive allele on locus 29—’”
“Romantic?”
Hong Yi meets her eye. “You don't think so?”
“Is that what it is?” she croaks. “Is that what this feeling is?”
“I mean, you're the best judge of that.”
“How do I tell?”
“Uh, well…do you wanna kiss him?”
She freezes as she tries to picture it. A kiss on the mouth. She only gets as far as imagining him leaning towards her, before her head feels like an overfull hot air balloon.
This emotion is different from the ones she felt looking at pictures in books. It is fiery. It has teeth. She wants to keep soaking in it. She wants nothing to do with it.
Shaking her head profusely, she whispers, “How do I make it go away?”
Hong Yi's smile is just enough to keep her feet on the ground. “It's okay,” he whispers, “you can't control how you feel about someone else. So step one is accepting that it's normal. And, I mean. He broke you out of the lab and then spent a month taking care of you, right?” She nods. “So, you caught feelings. That's totally understandable, if you ask me.”
“I feel like I'm not allowed to feel like this. Is there really no…” She rifles about for the right word. “No cure?”
“Well, the fastest way to make it go away is to tell him how you feel and see what he says.”
Adelaide begins at once to play multiple versions of that conversation in her head. What would he say? She pictures it—speaking earnestly and unflinchingly in the quiet of their room. Taking his hand on the staircase at a high society dance. Being Lucille. But…
“I'm scared.”
“Oh yeah, it is so scary. But he seems like the kind who would be flattered.”
“No, I mean, he's from 1894, and I'm pretty sure he's heterosexual, and—”
Hong Yi's eyes widen with attention. “And?”
“Do you…um, are you familiar…” She inhales. “Do you know…what a transgender person is?”
He blinks a few times too many. “Uh…yeah…I am one?”
Her thoughts crash together. “You?”
“Wait, you?”
Her head spins. This is too much for two in the morning. “Yeah—sorry—I didn't realise…”
But by now, Hong Yi is doubled over in breathless laughter, a fist hammering his knee. It is about half a minute before any intelligible words leave him. “I was gonna say the same thing,” he wheezes. “Oh my god. This is going down as my favourite two A.M. conversation of all time. Did you actually transition with your powers?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, Addie, you're the coolest person I know.” The sound of Hong Yi's laughter has dissolved some of her worry. He rubs tears from his eyes. “Okay, okay, I'm good now.” He smooths the mirth out of his face. “What were you gonna say?”
She halts to retrace her mental steps. “I'm scared,” she replies, “that he'll be weird about me being trans. Or that it'll change his mind about me.”
“If it does, then I'm punting him into the sun. I'll do it, just watch.” His gaze has settled into a warm sympathy. “Seriously—I'm so sorry it's something you have to worry about, but I totally get it. And honestly, I think your safety is more important than his comfort. If he is weird about it, then I don't think he's worth your time, because you deserve better than that. And, well,” he shrugs, “there's only one way to find out what kind of person he is.”
Adelaide starts twiddling her fingers on her lap. “So…I have to talk to him.” Her face softens with worry. “I'll think about it. I just don't want to make things awkward, if we keep having to be around each other.”
“It'll be awkward anyway! So you may as well.”
“That's true. Everything you say makes so much sense…thank you.”
“What can I say, I have to share my sagely wisdom.” Hong Yi pretends to stroke a long beard. “But seriously. You can always call me in for help, or talk to me if it doesn't go well. Or if it goes well, too. I'm kinda invested now.”
Only now does Adelaide notice that the leaden weight in her chest has lightened. Sitting for a while in the soporific comfort of the dwindling lights, in her companion's relaxed attention, her eyelids begin to droop.
Then a shout explodes through the hall. Then, a scream.
Both spring from their seats, peering up the corridor. Beneath one of the doors, lamplight flickers on. It's the farthest door up the hallway—Orobelle and Dorian's room.
No. It's Marcia and Vesper's.
Marcia does not intend to sleep a wink that night, but her exhaustion tests her. Her body still remembering the fever heat, she lies with eyes half closed, inspecting every inch of the dark room second by sluggish second just to keep her mind awake.
Then, it happens.
It is like in a ghost story: the door clicks, creaks gently open, and a dim figure shifts through the gap.
At once the drowsiness evaporates. She hears the faceless visitor creep towards them, footsteps dampened by the interlocking wooden slabs. She keeps her eyes narrow as slits.
Then, as she watches, she sees a rectangular sheet of paper extend into her vision, grasped by a thin hand—
—and that is when she leaps.
Like a pouncing snake, Marcia springs to snatch the arm in midair, shouting, “Got you!” While the captive cries out, she launches herself off the bed and drags them, kicking, towards where Dorian's rope hangs ready off the bed's baseboard. She tackles the intruder against the wall. The spy screams and convulses against each knot Marcia ties, but they are scrawny and untrained, no match for a seasoned warrior. Still, they kick and knee, once or twice landing a square blow that makes Marcia clench her jaw.
Then from the other bed, she hears Vesper's cry, sees the flash of her passing as she flies at the intruder.
One touch, a snap, and the spy tumbles to their knees. Marcia catches the stranger's shoulders in a vice grip, and they drop their book and the page they were about to plant. Vesper swipes the lamp kindling from the wall ledge. The golden flame clicks on while Marcia is tying the spy to the window grille.
This part, Orobelle declared necessary. There are few ways a spy could track them across multiple worlds. The simplest explanation is also the most dangerous.
The light flickers on, and for the first time, Marcia sees in full the captive they have bound: a girl, no older than sixteen, with messy dark hair, brown skin, and a sash tied around her waist.