Bubbles slowly percolated in the scum pool.
“There must be some kind of floor drain, or the stairs would be all full up.” Cyrus crouched and looked at the water.
“Cy.” Antigone tapped him with her foot. “Look at the door. It’s locked. And it has an old flyer nailed to it.”
Cyrus began unlacing his shoes.
“Oh, sick.” Antigone laughed. “Are you really?”
“What else are we supposed to do?” Cyrus asked. “Go back up and cry to Rupert Greeves or Mrs. Eldridge or that kid from the hall? They’re not getting rid of us now.”
He stuffed his socks inside his shoes and dipped a calloused toe into the dark liquid.
“And?” Antigone asked.
Cyrus shrugged and stepped into the shin-deep water. In the middle, he bent and fished around with his hands.
“The door, Cy. I care more about the door.”
“Then come on in and check it out,” Cyrus said. “Yep. Floor drain.” He tugged. “But somebody’s … shoved … in … an … old …” His hands geysered up with a dripping black strip of cloth and oil. “Sock.” He squinted at it, wiping his forehead on the back of his arm. “Orange stripes.”
Antigone wrinkled her nose. Laughing, Cyrus threw the sock up onto the stairs.
“Cy, that is really one of the sickest things I’ve ever seen you do.”
“You aren’t around when I skip school and hit the creeks.” Shoving his hand back into the water, Cyrus pulled up a long tangle of hair and drain scum hooked over his finger.
He held it out to his sister.
“No! Stop it, Cy!” The water was already bubbling quickly, glugging around Cyrus’s ankles. He tossed the hair carcass against the wall and turned to face the door.
A single step rose up just beneath the heavy oak door. An iron strap had been bent around the handle and through a ring in the stone wall. An old lock reconnected the strap’s two ends.
Antigone splattered through the last shallow water and wiped a coat of dust off the flyer on the door. The paper was old and soft with moisture. Two corners pulled free and curled.
“What’s it say?” Cyrus asked.
“At the top it says ‘Infestation Quarantine.’ ” She stood on her toes. “And it’s stamped ‘July 11, 1927.’ There’s something else written here, but I can’t read it.” Dropping back to her heels, she stepped away from the door. “You try.”
Cyrus leaned forward and cocked his head. “Ulip Spitters? No. Whip Spitters? Whip Spiders!” He looked at his sister. “The place was infested with Whip Spiders?”
Antigone crossed her arms. “I am not going in there. I don’t know what a Whip Spider is, and I don’t want to.”
“Oh, please,” Cyrus said. “This is from more than eighty years ago. And the door’s locked anyway.” He grabbed the iron strap and gave it a rattle. The ring in the stone wall shook. Dust dribbled to the wet floor. “Huh. Maybe …” Grabbing the door handle with one hand and the wall ring with the other, Cyrus tugged. The ring slid out so easily that Cyrus staggered back into the stairs as the door swung open. The hinges were silent. The motion was fluid.
Sucking air between her teeth, Antigone peered through the doorway.
“That was too easy.” Cyrus picked himself up. “Careful, Tigs. Somebody wanted it to look locked.”
“Which means what?” Antigone stepped into the dark. “There’s something in here worth finding?”
She felt around the edges of the doorway until she found what she was looking for. A button clicked, and six more large lightbulbs buzzed and sputtered.
The room was sprawling. The ceiling was low but pocked with vaults. Squat columns were scattered throughout. All the stone had been painted white, but large portions dangled off in leprous flakes. The floor was dusty white linoleum, savagely peeling at the seams. White triple-stacked metal bunks were scattered against the many walls.
And there were many walls — angled out, angled in. Cyrus couldn’t even guess at how many there were. A lot.
Strangest of all, a network of suspended plank pathways began just inside the door and ran throughout the room at least a foot above the floor. All of the planks were dangling from the ceiling by ropes and chains. None of them were dusty.
Cyrus tested the first plank with his foot. It swung slightly.
“What are they for?” Antigone asked.
“Walking?” Cyrus said. “I don’t know.”
Antigone looked down. Beneath the plank, painted in black on the linoleum, there was a triangle of lightning bolts around the same black stylized ship they’d seen on some of the boys’ white shirts.
“Weird,” she said.
Cyrus moved out onto the plank and it sagged gently. “There are all sorts of exercise posters on the walls, too. At least, I think that’s what those are.” He pointed. “The same two guys in short ties and high pants over and over again. Wrestling. Kicking each other in the head.”
“Cyrus,” said Antigone. “Cyrus …”
Cyrus reached a Y on his plank road. He went left.
“Cyrus! Turn around!”
Surprised, Cyrus turned. Just behind him, a strange-looking boy was standing at the first Y in the planks. He was wearing a tight white tank top tucked into a pair of army-green, much-too-large, much-too-pocketed fatigues, cinched around his waist with a rope. His paper-pale arms were knotted with muscle and tied with blue popping veins. His short hair was the color of dust and unevenly cropped around his skull. His face was smooth and young and unsunned, but somehow it didn’t match his eyes.
Cyrus stared into the boy’s eyes, and the boy’s eyes stared into his. What Cyrus saw, he didn’t know. What he felt was layer upon layer of ancient. The boy’s faint green irises looked like they had been beaten and polished more than the smoothest river rock, like they could see by nothing more than starlight — and they no longer cared to see at all.
Cyrus stepped forward and stuck out his hand. “I’m Cyrus.”
The boy looked at his extended hand.
He took it, and Cyrus shivered at the chill in his grip.
“Nolan,” the boy said, and he turned and swayed deeper into the room on the plank paths.
Cyrus looked back at his sister, questioning.
“Go,” she mouthed silently, pointing after Nolan. She was already hurrying forward.
“I think he’s the one Skelton was talking about when he was dying,” Cyrus whispered.
The two of them stopped, watching Nolan disappear around a pillar.
Antigone looked at her brother. “What do you mean? Skelton just said something about beekeepers.”
“Right. And then he said, ‘Trust Nolan.’ ”
Antigone’s eyebrows shot together. She tucked back her hair. “He did not. He said no one, not Nolan. And why would you trust anyone somebody named Billy Bones told you to trust.” She shifted her weight, and the plank swung beneath them. Antigone scanned the pillared room. “I’m not trusting some weird kid who lives down here.”
Nolan’s voice drifted around the columns. “I knew Skelton. Perhaps he trusted me. I never trusted him.”
Antigone blushed. Cyrus bit his lower lip.
“Come,” Nolan said. “Voices move oddly in the Polygon.”
Cyrus followed the planks deeper into the room, with Antigone close behind him.
“It’s not that you don’t look trustworthy,” Antigone said loudly.
“I know how I look.” Nolan’s voice was quiet but all around them. “Stay to the right.”
The suspended paths reached a large junction. Six routes splayed in different directions, winding around pillars and between rusty beds, disappearing around corners.
Cyrus paused. “Tigs, can you hear water?”
“Yes, you can,” said Nolan. “Pass through the showers.”
“Um, excuse me?” said Antigone. “Wouldn’t this be faster if we just walked on the floor?”