She selected one, dampened it with some odd glowing red ink, thenraised it. “Be ready to move,” she said, then pressed it to the wall. The stamp head, remarkably,sankhalf an inch or so into the brick. When Moonlight pulled it back—trailing red mist—it left a glowing red stamp imprinted into the wall, marked by intricate designs and patterns.
The wall then began toshift.The bricks groaned softly, then popped and ground as they pulled to the sides—suddenly fluid—and a door emerged in the wall. Like… like someone hadunzippedthe stones to reveal it underneath. In seconds the structure had rearranged—many bricks simply vanishing—to create a worn old wooden door with peeling yellow paint.
Moonlight yanked it open and gestured for them to enter. Marasi ducked in first, stepping over some buckets of paint that had been piled against the wall. TwinSoul followed, then finally Moonlight. They crowded into a small chamber, lit by a single red electric bulb. Why were there so many washbasins on the counter, and all of these jugs of liquid? Was this a storage room for cleaning supplies? That didn’t explain the red light bulb, which was so dim it barely did anything.
Behind them, the doorway vanished—as if being consumed by the bricks on the sides. “That is the most unnatural thing I’ve ever seen,” Marasi whispered.
“You literally have a friend who can fly,” Moonlight said.
“And?” Marasi said, unzipping her rifle from its case. TwinSoul threw off his coat, exposing his suit and yellow sash, then rested a hand on his sword. Marasi listened at the door, and was joined by Moonlight. When they heard nothing from the next room over, Marasi eased the door open and found a pitch-black chamber beyond.
They slipped through it, passing a strangely large number of what appeared to be chairs. Yes, in rows. What in the world? At the far reaches of the room, Marasi fumbled in the darkness, searching for a door. Her hands instead brushed what felt like a series of light switches.
Since the room was clearly empty, she flipped one of the light switches. However, it wasn’t the kind of light she’dbeen anticipating. A streak of illumination burst from one wall and shone onto the other, projecting a brilliant image.
An image of a crumbling city, with ash falling from the sky. Then the image startedmoving.
45
Marasi stared at the moving image, depicting a city in full color—though those colors were mostly muted dark greys and blacks against the brilliant red sky. Ash drifted from above, sprinkling the smoldering ruins. A loud mechanical sound came from the room emitting the light.
“By the first aether,” TwinSoul said, stepping up beside her and resting his hand on the back of a nearby chair for support. “What is it? A window into the future?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Moonlight said from the far wall, nearest the image. She hesitantly lifted her hand into the stream of light—and displaced the image, leaving a shadow of her hand on the wall.
Fortunately, Marasihadexperienced something like this once before. VenDell had shown them a way of projecting evanotype images onto a wall using light. Those had been static, and in black and white. But he’dsaid something then that had stuck with her:Harmony implies that if we find this wondrous, it will really burn our metals when the images start moving.
It appeared the Set had figured out that secret. And they’dfound a way to create moving images of another place, using cameras? This room did have the feel of a small playhouse theater, only without the stage.
But… was this landscape of piling ash and broken cities the future,or the past? It resembled Elendel, by the architecture, but there was so much rubble she couldn’t tell for certain.
“Here, look at this,” Moonlight called from the far side of the room, where she’dopened another door.
TwinSoul and Marasi joined Moonlight in a room with a different kind of decor. An enormous table dominated it, with a tiny replica of a city on it. It was like the model that TwinSoul had created, but made out of painted wood and plaster—broken and ruined, the buildings fallen as if in some disaster.
ItwasElendel; she could see that from the layout. So, not only had someone seen the future, they’dbuilt a model of what was going to happen?
Moonlight peeked into some boxes, then pulled out a handful of fine ash from one, which she let trail through her fingers. Other shelves held tiny props—miniature versions of people lying like corpses. Dead horses made of painted plaster. Broken buildings, ruined motorcars, some large red-painted sheets with depictions of clouds and a blazing sun…
And evanotype cameras, set up to look across the table from down low. Seeing that, it all snapped together for her.
“It’s a fake,” she whispered with relief. “They didn’t travel to the future or the past. They created a model of a fallen Elendel… then used these machines to craft pictures of a future that hasn’t happened. Even that picture we found earlier… it’s a fake. A photo of this model. They’ve beendeliberatelyconstructing a hoax to make peoplethinkthe world is going to end.”
“No,” Moonlight said. “They’ve been constructing a hoax to make people think it hasalreadyended. But who are they planning to show it to, and why?”
“If there are answers,” Marasi said, “we’ll find them below.” She nodded the other direction, out through the theater room toward the larger doors on the wall near the projecting device.
They peeked out to find a hallway lit with caged industrial lights. The place felt eerily empty, considering the earlier activity. Moonlight went out first. Marasi joined her, and they found a set of doors at the end of the hallway. These doors had windows at the top, so they could observe the loading dock beyond.
A group of armed men and women patrolled here. TwinSoul crouched beside Marasi, then let a tiny—practically invisible—line of crystals sneak under the door.
“Ah,” he said. “You see that large wall that juts out to our left, just inside the room? That’s our industrial elevator as you had anticipated, my lady.”
Marasi could make out the section of wall he indicated—but the front of the elevator would be facing away from them. They’dnever sneak through the open cargo bay without being spotted. Fortunately, they didn’t need to.
They moved through the hallway to the appropriate location—a blank wall, beyond which should be the elevator.
“All right,” Marasi whispered.