“Oh, great,” Liam sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose as though he had a headache. “Two Chambers.” He looked them both over with a mix of curiosity, confusion, and annoyance as they approached him. Then he looked upward as if speaking to a deity above. “What did I do?”
“Listen to me, monsieur. He’s here to help me with John. After everything I have gone through in the last few years, my mind is…” Vincent paused, as if trying to string together a sentence that didn’t exist.
Chamber picked up where he left off. “Like scrambled eggs.”
Liam blinked several times as if he was going cross-eyed. “You two”—he pointed back and forth between them—”haven’t been through the same things.”
“No, but—”
“We know each other pretty well,” Chamber finished again.
Nearby, Marielle watched all of this, her own gaze shifting from one to the other. Sabine threw her hands up in the air, let out a disgusted sound, and marched off. Marielle had no idea where to. Probably home. It was past everyone’s bedtime.
Liam crossed his big arms over his chest and looked to Marielle. She gave him an exaggerated shrug. “You understand this means we’re going to be posting watch on you again first thing in the morning, right?”
Vincent and Chamber both nodded, speaking almost simultaneously. “Oui.”
Again, Liam looked like he was trying to make sure he wasn’t going cross-eyed. “All right, then let’s get back up to the lab. After yesterday, I’m truly irri—interested to see where you are going with this.” He waved as if telling them all to get back upstairs. “I’m going home to bed,” he growled before stomping off.
Marielle caught a glimpse of Austin behind them. He was heading toward the kitchen when he spotted the two Frenchmen and paused, leaning on the wall with his hands in his pockets. Marielle wasn’t sure, but from this angle, he seemed to be eyeing Chamber.
She approached him. “Are you okay?”
“No desire to get involved in… whatever that is,” he growled, gesturing to Vincent and Chamber with his head.
“Why are you here?” she asked, noting that it was nearly midnight.
“Barbara called me in for something,” he explained, and again she thought she saw his eyes dart to Chamber, then back. “I’ll be here a while.”
Silence passed between them, and he shifted awkwardly.
“How was earlier tonight?”
He glared at her, his jaw tensing. The fact that she was drawing attention to whatever he had done with the woman from the bowling alley obviously upset him.
“Do you even know her name?” Marielle pressed.
He chuckled dismissively, but then his expression melted into something ironic, and he looked down between them. “Do you really think that little of me?” he asked. She crossed her arms and stared him down. “Her name was Rachel.”
“Was?” Marielle scoffed. “You kill her or something?”
Rolling his eyes, he shrugged and went to the stairway. She had meant it as a bad joke, but she could tell it stung.
“We’ll talk later, Marielle.” He began to march up the steps. She lingered long enough to watch him go up.
“This is killing you, Austin,” she shouted up after him.
It echoed around him in the stairwell, chilling him to the bone. She left, and went after Vincent and Chamber. “I know, Marielle,” he whispered, and as if Hazal was still manipulating the area, his words reverberated at full volume, causing every hair on his body to stand at attention and his heart to pound. Then he continued his ascent up to his office.
***
On the way up the elevator, Chamber and Vincent began speaking to one another in French. At first, Marielle wasn’t listening, but then she realized they were arguing and zeroed in on their conversation. She tried to stifle a giggle as she observed their over-the-top gestures and overt body language. Both men were too dramatic for their own good. They were talking almost too fast for her to mentally translate, but she caught some of it.
“No, no, the deal is still on. But I need more from you.”
“You can’t have more. I can’t keep teaming up with you at the drop of a hat.”
“My God, I thought we were looking out for each other.”
“Marielle is listening…”
They simultaneously glanced away from one another and grinned at her.
“Okay, that’s just creepy,” she said, turning away. “And yes, I understood some of that.”
They all stood still for a beat, Chamber facing the control panel in the elevator car, and Vincent facing Marielle as he leaned against the wall. The way he smiled at her made her heart flutter. Chamber looked at Marielle in the mirrored glass wall, and when she caught him, he smirked. Something about the way he looked at her gave her the feeling that she was somehow familiar to him. She didn’t like it. She knew Vincent, but Chamber shouldn’t know her.
“Talk to me about John,” Chamber said to Vincent.
Vincent began to rattle off a hundred scientific details Marielle didn’t understand, and Chamber responded with a stream of equally confusing jargon. She tried to follow their conversation as best she could, but most of it went way over her head.
Marielle felt lost when the doors to the elevator opened near the lab. She knew what part of the building she was in, but the double Vincent situation was playing on her mind in weird ways.
Chamber entered the lab with bounce in his step. “Bonjour!”
Kirra screamed—not a long, drawn-out horror film scream but a short, quick scream that made Marielle quell a laugh. However, after she regained herself, she approached curiously and asked if Chamber wouldn’t mind giving her a blood sample. He agreed, then started asking questions about the situation with John as Kirra took him to a table and began briefing him.
Vincent turned to Marielle. “Go home, rest,” he said quietly.
“You lied to me,” she whispered. He cocked his head to one side and looked down, but said nothing. “You know him. How many times have you two been…?” She searched for a word. “How often do you team up?”
Silence.
“I guess for some reason I thought you’d just come from your own dimension, but… You never said that, did you? I guess I’ll have to start paying closer attention to what you do say.”
Vincent looked truly lost for a moment, as if he had no response whatsoever.
“Maybe you’re right… maybe I shouldn’t trust you,” she said, then she glared at Chamber, who was doing a balancing trick with glass tubes that had Kirra utterly enthralled. “Either of you.”
She turned to leave, and he came after her a few steps.
“Marielle,” he pleaded. She stopped. “I’ve been to many dimensions. I implied this earlier when I told everyone that there were more of them.”
“You didn’t say that you’d been to them, though,” she muttered under her breath.
He sighed and ran a hand over his hair. “Fair. There is a lot you don’t know.” Then he put his hands in his pockets. “You’re my friend here.”
She didn’t like that deflection. “You have Klara as a friend.”
He smiled knowingly at the bait. “She is a different kind of friend. For one, she dates women.” He chuckled.
Marielle couldn’t stop a small smile during the pause that hung in the air. The implication of a desired relationship was strong. “Will you ever tell me everything, Vincent?”
He thought for a moment. “I will when the time is right.”
“When will that be?”
“Soon, I hope,” he replied. And he dared to reach out and gently thumb her chin.
She glowered at him and again tried to walk away. He had power over her, and she wasn’t sure how to react to it. Was he only using her? His touch felt good, but it was obviously planned. He’d lied to her more than once, and she didn’t know why.
As if on cue, he said, “Don’t you think I have a good reason for keeping the secrets I do?”
She whirled around. “I don’t know, Vincent, because I don’t know anything, remember?” she snapped, crossing her arms over her chest.
Everyone in the room stopped to watch them. Chamber had been juggling three oranges, but he caught them and looked over at them. So did Kirra and Klara.
Marielle waved a finger in Chamber’s direction. “Can you juggle?” she asked, eyeing Vincent.
He looked at her with an expression that was just as confused as she felt. “Apparently, he can.” His eyes widened for a moment, then he met her gaze again. She was angry with him, and it was written all over her face.
“My apologies,” he breathed. Then he exhaled, long, frustrated, and unsure. “I am willing to be totally honest with you. I just never know where to start, or how to.”
She rubbed the sides of her temples. “I’m… I’m so confused, Vincent… I mean, you kissed me earlier. And I’ll be totally honest with you… I liked that, but it was a very friendly kiss, a very…” She trailed off, shaking her head, and a soft smile died quickly on his mouth. “I don’t know you. I need time.”
She turned a final time and headed toward the hall.
And that’s when it happened: a sound that sent her into instant internal alarm. She froze long before she ever reached the door to the hall. That horrible, ear-piercing voomp…
Vincent looked at Marielle. Then he turned to Chamber. “They’re attacking!” he shouted.
Chamber nodded once and dashed to Vincent’s side. Both of them made a swirling motion with their hands and produced the card from their tattoos, then rushed into the hall.
Vincent flung his trademark camera into the corner near the elevator, and Chamber did the same with the stairway on the opposite end. “That’s a good spot,” he noted.
The two men ran four steps backward, perfectly in sync. It felt like watching someone wear a camera in their helmet as they rode a bike: the picture looked normal, but the result was disorienting. Both men placed their teleporters and drew their golden pistols.
“You cover there, I’ll cover here?” Vincent asked, gesturing with his head.
Chamber nodded, leaning against the wall near the stairwell, his gun pointed toward the ground, his finger hovering near the trigger. Klara and Kirra joined them in the hall, as did Marielle. Klara placed her turret, aiming toward the left-hand hallway, and Kirra stood near her holding her scouting bird, ready to blind.
“Marielle, stay back! They are here for you!”
A second voomp pierced the air.
“I’m staying, and don’t you tell me what to do again!” Marielle shouted, unholstering her pistol and getting it ready.
Vincent sighed, but Chamber merely smirked and said, “If any of you die today, I will remember you forever.”
Another voomp echoed through the halls.
“Where are they coming from?” Marielle whispered, eyes darting from one side of the corridor to the other.
Vincent raised his hand to quiet her, keeping his gun trained on the elevator. The arrow above it was moving as if it was coming up to their floor.
He briefly exchanged looks with Chamber, who nodded. “I’ve got you.”
Vincent stationed himself right behind Marielle, waiting. The elevator dinged—
And an ocean of water burst through the doors and engulfed the hall, destroying all of the machines in its path and plunging them all underwater. The hall lights flickered, then died, dropping everyone into cold, wet darkness.
Marielle didn’t know which way was up or down, let alone which direction she was pointing. All she knew was that she had to hold her breath, but she couldn’t find the surface as she thrashed about in the icy darkness. Everything was a blur of light and dark spots, and fearing that the rushing water would send something hurtling into her face, she squeezed her eyes shut.
She twirled and tossed, grappling for anything. Something slammed into her side hard enough to bruise her ribs, maybe break them. She wouldn’t know if it was a person or an object until she got off of this water park reject ride.
When her lungs began to burn, she found air and took in a giant gulp, grateful for the momentary relief. She spotted something yellow, and knew instinctively that it was Klara. She wasn’t close enough to reach the other woman before the yellow blob blurred away again. There was so much noise she didn’t even realize she was screaming Klara’s name over and over—first above water, then below.
Marielle surfaced again, and found herself choking on water that had gone down her throat. Then, as she spun in the rushing flood, another horror hit her. The blast had slammed the door open at the other end of the hall, and water was beginning to drain into the stairwell. It took her only a moment to realize that the water would vomit her into that giant open space, then slam her either down to the bottom or into a wall.
She thrust out a hand, searching for something to anchor herself. Her fingers made contact with something, but slipped. She cried out, trying to paddle away from the stairs. Her foot touched the floor, then she was swept away again. The current was too strong. Her fingers glided against another object, but she couldn’t get a grip on it.
The only saving grace was that the emergency lights had come on. At least now she could make some sort of sense of where she was. She was quickly going down the drain, about to be sucked right through the doorway to a certain death. Instinctively, she phased.
No help. In her panic, she couldn’t hold it. She wondered whether she’d be able to grab hold of the railing as she passed through the door, but she wouldn’t know until it happened, and then it might be too late.
Then something grabbed her wrist and held her still even as the water continued to rush over her body. She looked up to see Vincent, clinging to the doorframe in a way that made it difficult for the water to move him. His hair was a total mess, and his glasses were missing.
He smiled. “I’ve got you,” he said gently. Then he gathered her against his chest with one strong arm and held her there as the water passed over them, through the doorway, and eventually drained out of the hall entirely.
Once the water had receded, leaving only an inch or two on the ground, he let go of her. She instinctively grabbed his arms, terrified to leave the safety he offered.
He shook his head. “You’re okay,” he whispered.
She pulled away, belatedly realizing she was clinging to Chamber, not Vincent.
Vincent dashed down the hall, and Marielle saw him bend over someone and touch their shoulder. It took a moment to register that it was Klara. “Are you okay?” he shouted.
Klara sat up, dazed, and nodded.
Then Vincent ran to Chamber and Marielle, who turned and threw herself into his arms, shaking as the adrenaline left her body. He squeezed her tightly, body against body, part for part, and gave Chamber a nod. “Merci beaucoup,” he panted.
Chamber nodded back. “This isn’t over, not by a long shot,” he said, gesturing to the elevator.
“Where is Kirra?” Vincent asked.
Kirra popped out of one of the rooms near the lab. “I’m here,” she whimpered, drenched and bleeding from a large cut on her arm. “I managed to duck in and hold onto something.” She ran to Klara, who was just pushing herself off the floor, and threw her arms around her.
“I managed to teleport and do the same just before the water exploded into this area,” Vincent said breathlessly.
“Marielle!” a voice called from the stairwell. Marielle broke away from Vincent and poked her head in, looking over the rail. “Are you okay?”
She shouted down to Austin. “Yes, I’m okay!”
“Thank God.” Austin’s shaky voice echoed up the stairs. She could barely see him at the bottom of the steps as he leaned over his knees and exhaled. He was holding a pistol. “Is Vincent alive?”
“We’re all fine,” she replied.
He took the steps several at a time, and she noted that his lower half was also wet. He tucked the pistol into the back of his pants, then briefly embraced her.
“Where are they?” he asked, throwing a glance at Vincent.
Everyone was on edge as they waited for their attackers to appear. They kept their voices low and spoke quickly.
“Don’t know, Austin.” Austin and Chamber exchanged odd looks that Marielle didn’t understand. There was a familiarity there, one that wasn’t pleasant. Had they met before?
“How many have come through?” Austin asked.
“I think I counted three,” Kirra said, and Vincent nodded his confirmation.
“Water,” Austin commented, looking around his feet and trying to sidestep a puddle.
“Yeah, this is Harbor,” Vincent replied.
“You mean Varun?” Marielle asked, shifting a little closer to Vincent. He nodded. “He’s in the Middle East right now, at least the one who belongs here…”
Most of the agents at Valorant hadn’t seen the explorer from India in some time because he was off doing what he did best. Varun Batra possessed a special artifact he’d discovered on his adventures which gave him rare water-based abilities.
“Where is everyone else?” Chamber asked.
“Home, asleep… It’s almost one in the morning,” Marielle stated plainly.
“Then it’s a fight.” Chamber glanced around at everyone.
Austin sighed and briefly leaned back against the wall before standing and straightening. “Okay, what do you need?”
“Those powers you keep pretending you don’t have,” Chamber whispered.
Everyone stared at Chamber, then turned curious gazes to Austin. He swallowed hard and glanced at Marielle.
“We don’t have time for this,” Marielle said quickly. “Let’s just make a plan.”
“No plan, just fight,” Chamber stated.
“We’ve lost our trademarks,” Vincent noted.
Chamber nodded. “And teleporter’s broken.”
Vincent raised his hand and closed his fist in a snap. A small puff of smoke rose from his closed palm and he squeezed as if feeling the item return to his body. “Mine’s not.” He pushed the buttons on the side of his watch, and a small beep started counting to thirty.
Chamber nodded. “One shot for thirty seconds.”
“Share?”
“Eh…” Chamber cocked his head, lifted his hand, and seesawed it back and forth quickly. “It’s risky.”
“Call it out if you use it. I’ll use the watch to count.”
Everyone listened to their conversation in confusion. Marielle thought she understood. Because Vincent and Chamber shared the same DNA, they could each use items that were coded to the other. They just had to be careful and time things correctly.
Just then, another wave came through the room from seemingly nowhere. Instead of the deluge that had come for them before, it was just a tall wave that passed over each of them, drenching them again. Kirra slipped and sloshed around for a second, and Klara helped steady her. The men kept their footing.
“Any time now, Austin,” Chamber growled as he and Vincent drew their golden pistols again and Vincent ran to replace his teleporter.
Another wave began to emerge, and Austin sighed. Wiping water from his face, he lifted his hands and took a wide stance with his feet apart and palms pointed toward the wave. His eyes blazed icy blue, and frozen air passed from his hands toward the wave, first slowing it as it crumbled in on itself like an avalanche, then freezing it to sloshy bits of ice.
Kirra and Klara glared at Austin. He shook his head, closing his eyes. When another wave followed moments later, he did the same thing, filling the area with snow.
“There!” Vincent said, pointing up to the left. All eyes followed his finger. There was a new camera fixed to the wall. Marielle aimed and fired, and it crumbled to pieces. This caused a wave of panic amongst the party and their eyes began to dart around.
“Amir,” Chamber growled.
“Cypher?” Vincent asked, using the Moroccan’s agent name. Chamber nodded.
No one had ever seen Amir El Amari’s face, at least not at Valorant, although Marielle was certain his wife and child had. He donned a black facemask everywhere he went. Mostly, he was known as an information broker, but his abilities with hidden cameras, his knack for collecting secrets, and the fact that he was a skilled killer made him a truly frightening opponent.
Without warning, a cage of electricity surrounded Austin, and he disappeared inside of it, trapped. From the outside, it looked like a sphere of static.
Marielle reached for him. “No!”
Vincent jerked her back by the arm. “He’s fine,” he hissed. “Just give him a moment.”
A voice—Cypher’s—came from the bottom of the stairwell, shrill and eerie. “I know exactly where you are…”
Materializing her bird trinket again, Kirra lifted her hand and sent it to create a burst of pure light down the stairwell, blinding Cypher. Everyone heard him stumble back under the stairs in confusion. This happened just as Austin scooted out of the odd cage on his back, looking up at it in shock. He stood, backing away from it, and the cage dematerialized.
Bullets began to whip through the hallway, disorienting everyone and forcing them to duck for cover.
The second they stopped, Chamber lifted both hands. “Okay, you want to play?” He pulled the enormous sniper rifle from his body, the tattoos vanishing. “Let’s play.”
“Careful, Amir! Chamber has his gun!” a disembodied voice called from inside the elevator. That was Harbor. Now they knew where he was as well as Cypher. Where was the third intruder?
Klara set out her camouflaged alarm bot near the stairwell. Cypher would assuredly come up sometime soon, but she and Kirra had no weapons to defend themselves.
Chamber pointed his rifle toward the elevator and held position. Harbor popped out long enough to fire at Chamber, who ducked and snapped his fingers.
“Start the count!” he cried as he vanished in a flurry of color.
Vincent pressed the buttons on the side of his watch again. “Mon Dieu,” he muttered under his breath, raising his pistol and firing at Harbor.
The other man ducked again. Then he peeled out of the elevator and whirled, shooting another wave of water toward them. Austin caused it to crumble in on itself, but by the time it stopped, no one knew where Harbor had gone. Kirra sent her bird after him, going right. Nothing.
A bullet streaked through the air and struck Marielle in the left shoulder. She fell back and slid down, leaving a line of blood on the wall.
“No!” Vincent reached for her, and Austin bolted over as well.
Kirra waved her hands, and Marielle’s body felt as if mint balm were being placed over every pore. The bullet worked itself out of Marielle’s flesh and dropped to the ground, the wound closing up and vanishing.
“Healing over here,” Kirra whispered with a sweet smile. Marielle’s wound healed so quickly that by the time both men got to her, she was fine. “Let’s be careful. I can’t do that too many more times,” Kirra explained with a relieved sigh.
“Where did the bullet come from?” Austin asked. Marielle pointed; now they had a general direction.
Austin sighed, shaking his head as he looked at Vincent, speaking low. “We need to stay together. Only four of us have an actual weapon right now.” Chamber was glaring at him, but Austin didn’t look back.
“Right, right…” Vincent glanced over his left shoulder, then his right.
At the same time, Klara’s alarm bot sounded. Marielle lifted her pistol and fired just as a white figure blurred from the stairwell. The shot hit Cypher, and he went tumbling down.
Chamber finished him off with a single blast from his rifle, taking no chances. “I would apologize to you, but alas, you are dead.”
“Cypher’s down!” Harbor’s voice came from the far left of the elevator.
By now, the giant blocks of ice had melted a little from sitting on the damp floor. They shifted around like icebergs, threatening to make everyone slip.
“Klara,” Vincent said, turning and throwing her his golden pistol.
She caught it and looked it over, a wide-eyed expression on her face. “Won’t this disappear or something?”
“Not as long as I’m within the right radius.” He winked at her. “Three shots left. Use them well.”
Austin cracked his neck one way, then the other. Marielle met eyes with him, silently asking if he was okay. He smiled softly at her, then stood, helping her up.
“Let’s go hunting,” Vincent said, gesturing to the left of the elevator. Chamber nodded, and began to move forward with his rifle at the ready. “Marielle, Klara, and Austin, hold down this area. Kirra, stay with them.”
Kirra agreed. When Vincent and Chamber turned left down the dark hall, they encountered a seven-foot tall dome of water and a flood of bullets coming from around the sides of the dome. Chamber saw a blur, aimed, and fired his rifle.
No hit. More bullets.
Chamber and Vincent walked together, stepping carefully to avoid slipping. They only created small splashes that hardly echoed in the dripping corridor. Both knew Harbor would have a difficult time detecting their location.
There were doors on both sides of the hall, and each of them instinctively cleared the side they were on, peering into each room. The water dome eventually broke and collapsed, leaving a large, wet pool on the floor.
Chamber sighed; this would make things harder. Vincent held a fist up to signal a stop, and Chamber obeyed. Then he pointed left with two fingers, indicating a door that was not completely latched the way it should have been. They took up position on either side of the door, holding their rifles against them and waiting a beat.
Chamber looked to Vincent and shrugged, shaking his head. Vincent lifted three fingers, and Chamber nodded. Vincent counted down on his fingers, then burst into the room and took aim. The instant Harbor popped out to fire back, Vincent snapped, and the flurry of colors disoriented the other man long enough for Chamber to enter behind him and shoot Harbor.
“Whoever you are, you’re all that’s left!” Klara yelled, pointing Vincent’s golden gun toward the right side of the hall.
The world seemed to fall away, everything moving in slow motion as a grenade—one Klara knew well—bounced off the nearest wall and landed near them. She gasped and turned to everyone. “Get back!”
They all pulled up, and slipped and slid back into the lab.
After the blast, which singed Klara’s hair, she stood and lifted a shaking hand toward the hall. “No,” she whispered.
Tayane came around the corner, her eyes welling.
“No…” Klara repeated, shakily lifting the golden pistol and training it on her girlfriend’s face.
As Vincent emerged from the room he’d teleported to, he shouted, “Klara, it’s not her!” He came up behind her. “Klara, this is not Raze. This is not your Raze!”
Tears fogged Klara’s glasses, and she drew in a ragged breath, slightly lowering the weapon, then clearing her face of all emotion and using both hands to bring it back up and aim at Raze’s lovely face. She began to tremble again, and her breath snagged in her throat.
“I can’t,” Klara whimpered. “I can’t.”
But the moment she saw Raze’s expression shift to a sly smile and watched her pull another grenade from her belt, Klara pulled the trigger. The bullet struck Raze in the face and she collapsed on her back, dead.
Klara dropped to her knees, the gun falling away. Vincent collected it back into his arm.
Chamber came from the hall. “I win again!” he jeered.
Everyone else was silent and stunned. “Don’t get cocky,” growled Austin.
“A little cock never hurt anyone. Isn’t that right, Austin?” Chamber said with a smug grin.
Austin rolled his eyes and went to Klara. She was frozen, staring down at her violently shaking hands.
The others stopped and surrounded her. She wasn’t okay, and the shock hadn’t worn off at all. Even Chamber collected his rifle and dropped down behind her. Everyone put their hands on her shoulders.
“She’s okay,” Vincent whispered. “Your Raze is okay…”
It was clear that his words weren’t registering. The dimly lit room echoed with water drips as the ice melted.