looking at me or at my reflection in the window beside us. Liam motioned for me to stay still, and he crept around the other side of the bird. Then—
“Damn it, Moriarty,” a familiar voice said from around the corner, and Liam and I looked at each other in horror. Dr. Kapoor was here. What was she doing here in the middle of the night?
“I thought you put a combination lock on the cage,” Dr. Hardcastle said.
“Clearly that isn’t a foolproof solution,” she snapped back. “I’ll get him. You work on getting that equipment fixed. We can’t afford for it to fail with the way the mist’s been acting up.”
“Normal seasonal variation,” Hardcastle replied, sounding exasperated. They were getting close. They were going to come around the corner and find us. Liam’s face was a mirror of my own dread. We were on opposite sides of the hallway from where Hardcastle and Kapoor’s voices were coming. Go, I mouthed. I moved backward as quickly as I could without making a sound. I reached for the nearest door—Please be open, please be open.
It was. I slipped inside and shut the door slowly behind me, hoping Liam had found someplace to hide.
Only then did I get a look at the room I was in—and I frowned, puzzled. The room was filled with audio equipment, enough to stock a recording studio. There was a bank of monitors and computers that looked like they had enough computing power to put a man on Mars, and printouts strewn around or tacked up on the walls with what looked like sound waves and—satellite imagery? They were of the island, and the mist.
A window stretched along one side of the room, and on the other side was a shadowed chamber. I could make out several microphones, and something else—a birdcage, covered in a white cloth. A recording booth? Hardcastle was studying bird calls, but this seemed like overkill. I crept toward the window, the glass throwing back my dim reflection.
And then a footstep sounded outside the room. Hardcastle.
Something shifted at the corner of my vision. A trick of the light, but my eyes went to my reflection, wild-haired and waifish in the dim light, features indistinct. I touched the sleek braid that hung over my shoulder; my reflection mimicked the movement—but she didn’t have a braid, just that wild tangle of hair.
She crooked her finger toward me.
The reflected room around her was dark, the angles of the walls and ceiling barely perceptible. The doorknob began to turn.
“Little bird, little bird,” Moriarty croaked in the distance. I lifted my hand tentatively toward the reflection.
The door swung open. I spun around, trying to form a plausible excuse.
A hand grabbed my wrist and yanked hard.
VIDEO EVIDENCE
Recorded by Joy Novak
AUGUST 14, 2003, TIME UNKNOWN
The camera switches on, then off, then on again. It focuses on floorboards, then spins to look up at Sophia Novak’s face. She squints in the bright light and shifts it quickly away, training it instead on the adults, who are clustered together near the other side of the room. Joy Novak still has her bandaged leg stretched out on a pew.
HARDCASTLE: We can’t stay here. We need to leave as soon as it gets light out.
NOVAK: When is that going to be? Night was only supposed to last an hour. It’s been at least twice that long.
HARDCASTLE: Morning has to come eventually.
NOVAK: I wouldn’t put much faith in natural laws here, Will.
KAPOOR: So then we don’t wait. We find a way out now.
CARREAU: What does that mean? Out? How do we do that?
KAPOOR: Obviously, I don’t know. But I refuse to believe that there is no way back to—what, our world? Our reality?
CARREAU: A way out of the mist.
Novak cocks her head to the side.
NOVAK: That singing is starting again.
The others seem to hear it as well, but the camera picks up nothing but the faint sound of wind between the gaps in the walls.
CARREAU: It doesn’t sound threatening.
KAPOOR: What, that doesn’t creep you out?
CARREAU: Unsettling, yes. Threatening, perhaps not. I think we should investigate.
KAPOOR: I agree. We need to know more, and we aren’t going to learn it hiding in here.
NOVAK: It isn’t safe out there. Sophie—
KAPOOR: No, of course you’ll stay. Two of us should go see what we can find, and someone able-bodied should stay behind with you. Bar the door behind us.
CARREAU: It sounds as if you have already decided you will be one of those to go.
KAPOOR: I couldn’t stand waiting