Adrian took a moment to draw himself a new tranquilizer dart and loaded the gun before leaving the corridor. He opened the door at the end and froze as he found himself standing in a hexagonal room, where each wall bore an identical green door.
“Fine,” he muttered. Letting the door shut behind him, he turned and marked it with an X, so he would know he’d already been this way. He pulled open the first door to his right, revealing a plain brick wall. He reached out and knocked and, determining that they were real bricks and not an optical illusion, shut the door and marked it.
He opened the next door and his pulse jumped.
The room before him was painted, floor, walls, and ceiling, in swirls of black and white, making it appear that the room got smaller and smaller as it stretched out before him.
But this was not what had given him pause.
Rather, the optical illusion was broken up by three things.
A sleeping bag. A pillow. And a large black duffel bag.
He stepped into the room, eyes darting over every surface. He half expected Nightmare to appear from some dark corner, but there was nowhere in here for her, or anyone, to hide.
Adrian crouched beside the duffel bag and pulled back the zipper. Inside, he found a change of clothes, a pair of sneakers, and the bazooka-size gun Nightmare had used to throw those ropes around him during their fight above the parade.
It was all the confirmation he needed.
Standing, he raised his wrist and sent a quick message to Nova, asking her to meet him back up on the second floor. Then he alerted the Council, informing them of what he and Insomnia had found.
He had just sent the message when he heard the squeak of floorboards. He stilled, holding his breath to listen. After a long silence, in which he could once again catch the tinny notes of faraway carnival music, he heard another groan of ancient floorboards.
Returning to the door, he peered into the hexagonal room. Trying to guess where the noise had come from, he adjusted his hold on the gun and stepped across to the opposite door. He opened it slowly. Silently. Grateful when it did not creak on its old hinges.
Inside was a narrow hall, just wide enough for one person to walk through. It was pitch-black, but for a series of tiny round holes on each wall, placed at varying heights in sets of two. Adrian stepped forward and the door shut behind him, throwing him into near blackness. He approached one set of holes and bent down to look through. On the other side of the wall, he recognized the corridor with the portraits, where Nova had fallen through the trapdoor, and quickly realized that he was staring through the eyes of one of the paintings.
His blood chilled as he recalled the peculiar sensation of one of the paintings watching them.
He turned to the other wall and found himself staring into another crooked room, where the walls were painted to trick the mind into thinking it was walking downward, and pitching to the left, while the floor itself was slanted the opposite direction. There were doors at each end of the strange room, and as he stared, the door to the left opened.
He waited for Nova to appear, but instead a figure in a black hood swept into the room.
He stifled a gasp, his lungs squeezing painfully in his chest.
Nightmare.
He had found her.
Without pause, Nightmare stalked purposefully to the next door and disappeared into the hexagonal room. Adrian listened as doors opened and slammed shut, then he thought he heard her shuffling things around in the room where he’d found her bag. His brow knitted. Did she know her location was compromised? Was she preparing to run?
He set his jaw, determined not to let her get away again.
Breaths coming in short bursts, he readied the gun and slipped back into the hexagonal room and paced across to the other door. His hand landed on the handle, but from the corner of his eye he noticed the black X he’d drawn onto the next door, and the next.
Wouldn’t Nightmare have noticed—
The gun was yanked out of his hand, and a foot slammed into the back of Adrian’s knee, knocking him to the ground.
He drove his elbow back, catching her in the stomach. Nightmare grunted and pitched forward, crashing into Adrian’s shoulder. He went to shove her back, but in that same moment she had grabbed on to the hem of his own jacket and yanked it upward, trapping his arms in the sleeves. She shoved him to the floor and he landed hard on one side. As he struggled to rid himself of the restraining jacket, he heard a door open and slam shut, her footsteps pounding away as she ran.
With a furious cry, Adrian ripped his jacket off and threw it on the ground. He was panting, though more from frustration than anything else. Snarling, he grabbed for the door he thought she’d gone through and found himself staring down a long horizontal cylinder. There was no sign of Nightmare.
Snarling, he raised his communicator. “Sketch to HQ, calling for backup. I’ve located Nightmare. She’s on the run—I’m pursuing her now.”
He ripped off his T-shirt, then, revealing the top of the Renegade uniform, and ran. He stumbled through the cylinder, which didn’t even surprise him when it started to pitch and roll under his feet, then through an obstacle course of swaying rope bridges and down a spiraling staircase. Through a gallery of animatronic marionettes that, thankfully, did not come to life as he weaved between them, then up another optical illusion ramp, until he finally shoved his way through a set of double doors and found himself outside.
It was darker now than when they had entered. Dusk came on fast this time of year, and already the shadow from the fun house stretched long across the overgrown grasses in front of him.
He paused, his eyes darting in each direction, searching and listening for any signs of Nightmare—or Nova, for that matter—but this desolate corner of the park seemed as abandoned as ever.
Nova.
He didn’t want to worry about the fact that he hadn’t seen or heard from her since they’d been separated, but now that he knew Nightmare was close, fears began to crowd into his mind. What if Nightmare had found her? What if …