corpse of a handsome man, his eyes empty, his skin waxy smooth.
Sloane had seen his face and lived.
She dove for the bag she had brought with her from Earth and turned it upside down on the white floor. It was morning, but only just, so the light coming through the frosted windows was blue. She squinted at the pile she had created. There were soggy receipts and gum wrappers, wet matches, a pocketknife, her wallet. She poked her fingers into the corners of the billfold. There, wedged between a dollar bill and the leather, was one last benzo.
She held it up so she could stare at it. Just one left. She could take it now, trusting that this—the morning after finding out she was trapped in an alternate universe—was the worst it would get. Or she could save it for when she was insensible with terror. There were surely harder times ahead.
Sighing, Sloane put the pill on the bedside table and stuck her head between her knees to breathe.
It was a little brighter in the room when Sloane had collected herself enough to stand up. She left the wet matchbook and other scraps on the floor, shoved her feet into her boots, and walked down the hall. The others were still asleep. She went to the bathroom to force her tangled hair into a braid and rinse the sleep from her eyes. They hadn’t given her a toothbrush, so either they didn’t use toothbrushes anymore because they cleaned their teeth with siphons or they had simply forgotten to leave her one. In any case, her teeth felt fuzzy.
After making herself somewhat presentable, she walked to the elevator, but she didn’t know how to summon it. The night before, Nero had done it with his siphon. But even magical elevators had to break down sometimes, she thought, so she went in search of stairs.
She found them around the corner, through a door with a sign saying EMERGENCY USE ONLY, which seemed more an idle threat than something to be concerned about. And sure enough, when she turned the handle, no alarm sounded, no lights flashed to warn of security guards coming.
The stairwell didn’t appear to get much use. The steps were decorated with black and white tiles in wedges and triangles, and the railings were wrought iron shaped into tight curlicues. She descended to the lobby, skimming the iron with her fingertips all the way down. She thought of her morning runs along the lake back in her Chicago, the cold air and the foam that gathered on the beach sand from the crashing of the waves. That, at least, would be the same on Genetrix.
But when she reached the lobby, which was all marble, gold trim, and art deco diamonds combined with Frank Lloyd Wright lines, she saw a sign pointing toward the library. The thought of an endless supply of information was irresistible, so she followed the arrow down a hallway of stained glass. The multicolored panes were arranged in a pattern of fanned half-circles layered over each other, each segment a different shade of green. The rising sun cast green spots on her shoes.
The hallway opened into a massive space that smelled like old paper. Sloane stopped and closed her eyes just for a moment, pretending she was home, in the library down the street from her apartment.
Books smelled the same no matter what dimension you were in.
The library was C-shaped, as if the room were curled around something to stay warm. Two stories of bookshelves towered over her head on either side of the somewhat narrow space, with walkways on the second level. In the center of the room were tables and desks, and the place was lit from above by skylights and by old-fashioned lamps with multicolored glass shades glowing in the center of each table. It didn’t much resemble her library back home. For one thing, there were no computer banks crowding out the bookshelves.
She frowned. She hadn’t actually seen a computer in Genetrix yet, and the people she had seen in the passing cars the night before hadn’t been staring at smartphones either.
Did Genetrix even have the internet?
Sloane walked along the inner curve of the library looking for a computer. The place was empty and silent; there was nothing keeping Sloane from running off with a stack of books. Nothing she could see, anyway. But then, she didn’t know what Genetrix magic was capable of.