Page 88 of Inkpot Gods

There are cages set into the walls, all of them empty, holding not even bones. Lilianne starts toward them, then pauses. She can see the metal grating underfoot. So why can’t she feel it?

Every step she takes is elevated, just a little, just enough that she can feel the difference. It doesn’t help that whatever she’s actually walking on is softer than metal would be, yielding, like walking on the rubber matting that sometimes gets put down on convention center floors during trade shows or academic conferences. She stops and bends, reaching for the floor. She needs to feel whatever it is she’s walking on top of. She needs to understand.

“Stop!” says Smita.

Lilianne looks sharply up, focusing on her companion. “What is it?”

“I don’t … I don’t think you should be touching that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not safe.”

Lilianne glances down again. The floor is glossy and unobstructed, no rugs or plastic sheeting to obscure the plain metal. “I’m standing on it,” she says, trying to sound reasonable. “I’m already touching it, if you really think about it.”

“Your shoes are touching it,” says Smita. “Please … please don’t.”

Lilianne glances up again. Something about Smita’s face isn’t right. There’s a lurking horror in her expression that doesn’t match the situation in the slightest. “Smita, what’s going on?”

“Can you really not see?”

Lilianne looks down for a third time. “I don’t think so, no. Whatever it is you’re seeing, it’s not here for me.”

“The floor is covered by what looks like a layer of skin. Not just skin: it’s too plump and rounded to be just skin. There’s tissue underneath it. It has pores, Lily. No hairs or freckles or anything like that, but it’s alive. It’s soft and squishy and alive. It’s on the walls, too. And when you reach for it, it reaches back.”

“How do you mean?”

“These little threads come up out of the pores and they stretch toward your fingers, like they’re going to grab hold. I’m afraid if you touch it, you won’t be able to pull your hand away.”

Lilianne blinks then, and for just a moment, it seems like she can see what Smita’s describing, a layer of pinkish flesh, the skin closer in shade to her own than to Smita’s, skin that’s never seen the sun before. She pulls her hand back as she straightens. “All right. Let’s say you’re right.”

“So easy?”

“If I’m right and the floor is plain metal, I touch it and no one gets hurt. If you’re right, anyone who touches skin that puts out feelers so it can touch them back could be in a lot of trouble. Do we turn back or keep going?”

“Roger and Dodger went this way.”

The statement isn’t the same as an answer, and it is at the same time, because out of all of them, Smita is the one who doesn’t have to be here. She could have walked away as soon as the twins finished spinning the timeline into something that would let her stay away; she could have chosen freedom from the tangled web of the alchemical world. The fact that she didn’t says more about her capacity for love and loyalty than anything else could possibly communicate.

If her people are here, Smita isn’t leaving. That much is easy to see. Lilianne takes a deep breath. Logic says they should go and find Artemis and Kelpie, should get themselves some backup before they go any deeper into a space that is apparently trying to actively disguise itself from her. This isn’t safe. And that doesn’t matter.

“Alchemy has a lot of focus on transformation and healing,” she says, haltingly. “Filling a room with flesh that lives despite not having a visible body is absolutely within the capabilities of a master. It would, however, require a lot of raw materials to set up.”

“This was the menagerie, according to Kelpie,” says Smita. “I don’t see any animals, and there weren’t any alchemists in here when we arrived. Not even dead ones. Maybe this was set up as a failsafe, in case the place was being evacuated? You can’t spill anyone’s secrets if you’ve been absorbed into a giant skin blob.”

That isn’t entirely true, but Lilianne doesn’t think hearing that will make Smita feel any better. It wouldn’t make her feel any better, and she doesn’t have people lost somewhere inside this collection of horrors. She takes a longer look around.

In addition to the door they entered through, there are two halls leading deeper into the lab, one open, the other blocked by a door with a crash bar like the one they’ve already opened. Taking a guess, she points at the closed door: “What do you see over there?”

“Just wall, which means, just skin,” says Smita.

Lilianne nods. She doesn’t know why they’re seeing two different versions of this space, but none of the explanations she can come up with are good ones. They range from the bad—everyone who comes here sees something different, chosen at random from a list of horrors—to the truly terrible—the lab doesn’t want one of them, and is doing its best to get rid of the unnecessary body, whether by blocking out all the dangers so that they’ll stumble into disaster, or by showing them everything to whet their curiosity. That option is worse in part because she can’t decide whether it’s trying to attract her or Smita.

She doesn’t want to get hurt defending someone she barely knows. Her crush, while strong, is nowhere near that powerful. But she also doesn’t want to stand idly by as Smita walks open-eyed into danger. She moves her finger, pointing to the second door.

“And there?” she asks.

“An opening. That’s the way deeper into the lab.”