Chapter 28: A Very Expensive Impersonator

The red indicator stayed lit while Professor Vale asked the outside team to guard the service landing. Senn moved everyone clear of the loading door, and Dante let go of Posey’s hand before putting his bag against a shelf, keeping his good hand available.

The officer inspected the powered latch from behind Professor Bell’s clear passage. Its manual release sat beyond the loading door on the landing, where a firefighter could reach it once the team outside finished checking the escape stair.

Wheels scraped beside Posey. Pressure from the blocked corridor shoved a rack of painted trees toward the walkway, and Dante pulled her back by the sleeve with his good hand. "Anika, the rack!" He pointed to its moving wheels, giving her a target instead of another shouted name.

She drew a curling blue shape above her wrist and spoke a rolling Korean phrase, finishing the last sound before wind pressed the rack against the wall. Her hair lifted around her pointed ears while she kept the movement narrow enough to avoid the people beside it.

While Anika pinned the rack, Dante spotted cable across Posey’s path. He checked with the technician before shifting the slack loop, letting Posey hold his bag. Grand strategy had become clearing a walkway, but everyone could use the opening he made.

Professor Vale returned from the control doorway with the copy’s offer: it would stop if Dante came alone. He pictured descending to confront himself, an entrance worth remembering. Then he remembered Jett trusting a confident voice and realized that was exactly the invitation’s appeal.

"No one goes alone," he said to Senn instead, keeping his answer inside the room. The inspector nodded, then relayed the threat over his radio without offering Dante’s fear as something the figure could negotiate with.

Metal scraped as the outside team released the latch. The officer checked their identification and opened onto a wet escape stair, where one responder held the door while another checked the steps and waved them forward. Dante kept his bag clear of the opening.

Professor Vale led Posey through first, followed by Dante with his bag held clear of the dressed fingers. Anika kept the scenery pinned until the technician and Senn passed, then released the wind when the officer braced the rack with a locking wedge.

Professor Bell retreated last, maintaining the passage until everybody reached the landing. His bird followed through the loading doorway and perched on the rail before the officer closed it, allowing Professor Bell to release both protective shapes without leaving the animal inside.

Posey’s knees shook on the stairs. Dante matched her pace and held her hand until the medic needed space. She asked for another movie without an emergency. He agreed immediately. He would find something sinister about a romantic comedy if that kept her beside him.

At the bottom, Rhea waited with the responding medical team, having been called from placement. She checked his awareness and asked about pain while the qualified medic examined Professor Bell, refusing to let either man convert exhaustion into an achievement.

Anika rested beside him with water. He thanked her for the wind and asked if she needed help. A minute and a drink, she said, without weather commentary. He stayed, discovering how much he liked her even when neither had an audience to impress.

"I’m practicing accepting instructions from a beautiful woman without making it weird," he admitted. She gave him a tired smile and said his technique needed work, which felt reassuringly familiar after hearing his own face bargain for their lives.

Inside, the stage team isolated the demonstration circuit while Senn supervised from a protected doorway. A responder reported that the figure still moved, and the technician asked them to inspect beneath the lectern before touching its body.

Dante heard the exchange from the medical checkpoint, where they waited behind a barrier line. Professor Vale asked the stage team for a video view and held her phone where Professor Bell could see it beside the medic. Dante watched over her shoulder as responders spread a containment sheet across the floor, its stitched symbols lighting when their leader completed a drawn form and spoken phrase.

On the phone screen, the figure stepped toward the responders and stopped where the sheet’s border rose into a clear enclosure. It struck the surface with an open hand, still wearing Dante’s face. Professor Bell watched beside the medic and told Professor Vale to pass on that nobody was to smash it.

A cable ran from beneath the lectern into the figure’s heel. The technician showed Senn how its pulses differed from the isolated mains, then called medical closer without cutting it, making Dante’s relief turn unpleasantly familiar.

The copy’s jacket tore against an internal bracket when it twisted, exposing a wooden support beneath a thin moving surface. It wasn’t another student, although discovering that did little for the people whose bodies had powered the earlier equipment.

Professor Bell said equipment could release prepared spells, though this one still needed inspection. Dante stared at the heel cable. He’d assumed his double possessed greater power because it looked confident. Annoyingly, that resembled his own preferred method of assessment.

Through Professor Vale’s phone, the technician reported tracing the cable to a junction in the plant room. Another technician checked the laboratory monitor and confirmed all five recovered pads remained isolated. Whatever fed this figure had not come from reconnecting Jett.

Posey stood beside Dante while Anika listened to the reply, her water bottle forgotten in her hand.

He wanted the source to be a battery. Another secret victim would suit the kind of story he’d imagined, but he had met Jett now. Rhea promised they would check before disconnecting anything. She didn’t promise him an answer he’d like.

He looked at the hand she’d just checked. His fingers had wanted to cast upstairs, and he had stopped them while Professor Bell covered the escape. He wanted credit for that, which embarrassed him until he realized he could still be glad nobody had needed to stop him. Next time, he wanted to make the choice sooner.

"Can the person at the other end hear?" he asked. Whoever it was deserved to know someone had stopped to check, before his voice became another reassurance they had reason to hate.

The medic said they didn’t know, then told the team at the junction to check for a speaker as well as a cable. Senn copied the number from the feed tag, checked it against the five recovered patients and told medical to prepare another bed.

The number belonged to none of them, and the pressure light beside it was still climbing.