Chapter 23 - Base
"That's not possible," Gabriel said, insistent. "This wasn't like Joshua. They found a body."
"A body that was never allowed to be medically examined," I replied. I stood up, wandering back inside Crystal's house. I picked up Gabriel's phone in the kitchen and tossed it to him.
"Find me, the text said," I explained. "So let's go find the body."
Despite the hour, we started our trek towards the hospital, dragging our feet when we tired of walking and stumbling when we tired of dragging our feet. Before my half-dreaming mind could stage a coup d'état on my body, we arrived in front of the imposing building, a place we seemed to always end up again and again and again.
At least this time neither one of us was being wheeled in with a life threatening wound. Maybe we were finally learning.
"I don't understand what's happening," Gabriel hissed as we passed through the doors. The receptionist looked up from her desk, but she simply peered at us warily as we hurried by.
"Neither do I," I said honestly.
We hurried along the empty hallways, whizzing past open doors and beeping machines, our steps in sync with the rise and fall of sleeping lungs within the rooms.
The elevator into the sub-level had been faulty ever since Joshua blew it up with an aerosol bomb, so we took the stairs, leaping down three at a time. We hardly cared whether or not the security cameras would pick up our faces. This time, we didn't bother sneaking.
When we came into the sub-level's hallway, there was an officer standing guard in front of the morgue. I recognised him as Officer Lubowski when we got nearer, though he hadn't seemed to notice us approach. He was too busy listening to a phone call that was dismissing him from duty, since the alleged killer had been caught and Maire Reeve's body no longer needed police protection.
That was a big joke.
"Well, hello," Officer Lubowski greeted, finally spotting us. He wrinkled his nose. "What are you doing here?"
"There's something we need to see," I answered cryptically. I typed the security code into the morgue's entry panel, and pushed open the door when it gave a click, gasping at the shock of cold air.
"How did you—"
The officer was surely about to ask how I knew the code—a code that was the same for every public area in Altswood—but his words trailed off, likely coming to a conclusion of his own.
"Which one is keeping Maire Reeve's body?" Gabriel asked, referring to the drawers.
Officer Lubowski was frowning, but he didn't look hostile. It was more like he was concerned for what he had just gotten himself involved in.
He pointed to a middle drawer on the middle wall. "That one."
My hands were shaking. I took a deep breath, though that was a rather difficult task in the icy temperature.
"Did they run any tests on the body?" I asked Officer Lubowski.
"No," he replied, seeming mystified by my questioning. "We told the doctors to leave it alone, just in case."
I stepped forward. "Can I open the drawer?"
A grimace came from Officer Lubowski then. "I would really rather you not, but if you must."
Gabriel and I exchanged a glance. He nodded in encouragement. Together, we reached for the handle, pushed down, and pulled the full length of the drawer free from the wall, not stopping until the metal cogs caught the end.
I didn't know how to react when Maire Reeve's corpse was indeed lying on the steel bed. We stared down at her. Silence grew heavy in the arctic room.
"She looks dead to me," Gabriel finally remarked.
My eyebrows furrowed, unable to make sense of what I was seeing. Tight, dull skin stretched across a frozen, almost blue face. Her lips had lost all colour and her hair was brittle at the ends, fanned around her head neatly. A sheet was drawn over her body, and when I pulled it back, her deadened skin continued, looking more shrunken with the longer she spent in the freezer.
The angry ligature marks on her neck hadn't faded. They were just as purple and savage as what I had seen in photos: she was just as dead as she had always been, and though her facial features were strained terribly against her bones, there was no doubt that this was Maire Reeve.
That didn't make any sense—I had thought for sure she faked her death; I had thought she had done so to bring Beatrice's case back into relevance again, to create a false threat that forced us to look into the mystery.
Something else nagged at me. I wondered what I wasn't supposed to find in her house. I wondered if I had already found it.
"Gabriel," I whispered. "Does your phone receive internet down here?"
He retrieved his phone, waking the screen. "Yeah, I have a signal."
"Pull up Google Translate," I commanded. "Japanese to English."
Officer Lubowski was watching us with increasing concern and intense confusion. Gabriel frowned at my strange request, but he didn't question it. He nodded, signalling for me to continue onto the next step.
"Type in Uso-tsuki," I whispered, remembering the familiar word from Maire's transaction sheets. I spelled it out for Gabriel, still trying to dig through the depths of my brain, pondering what on earth it could mean if I had heard it before...
"Liar," Gabriel reported back, reading the translation.
Liar. Maire Reeve was a liar.
"Google the company name," I demanded now. "Uso-tsuki Beauty. What do they do?"
Gabriel obliged, narrowing his eyes in concentration as he typed the search and pulled up the first link.
"Uso-tsuki Beauty is a multinational corporation founded in 2004," he read. "They specialise in—" he trailed off with a short breath, his eyes widening.
"What?" I demanded. "What do they specialise in?"
Gabriel's gaze lifted. Understanding dawned on him. "Hyper-realistic mannequins."
I backed away from the drawer, one step, then two. I pivoted on my heel, a burst of energy rushing from my head to my fingers to my chest, fuelling my every breath as I searched the table at the centre of the room.
"Luca?" Officer Lubowski said warily. I was rummaging through the equipment box at the base of the table, muttering incoherently to myself. When I stood up swiftly, I had a scalpel clutched in my fist.
Officer Lubowski leaped back, but I hadn't suddenly decided to become a psychopathic killer like he probably feared. I stepped towards the alleged corpse, and stuck the blade into its stomach.
"Jesus," Gabriel hissed, jerking back in disgust.
The sound that was emitted from the action was not the expected grotesque squish of flesh under metal. It was a sharp pop, as if I had cut into rubber. I grimaced, then used both my hands to continue dragging the blade up, cutting though the flesh-coloured material with some effort.
I had to give the manufacturers props: this skin felt as real as the layer on my own hands. Perhaps it was a bit tougher than normal, but after all, her body had been found floating in water, and then frozen to prevent decaying. Someone who was unaware of its true nature would find absolutely nothing amiss about the texture.
"Ugh."
Exhausted, I drew the scalpel back, having sawed a line from the navel to the clavicle.
Maire Reeve's body had never been cut open, and yet there were no organs inside. No bones, no muscles, no veins—only foam that held up her torso so it did not cave inward. Within the foam, there was a hollow middle at her stomach, and what appeared to be something glinting under the overhead lights.
"Can you—" I gestured for Gabriel to help peel back the fleshy material further.
Gabriel complied, though not without grimacing and pulling a horrified face.
"The things I do for you," he muttered.
This would definitely rank high on the list of most disturbing things we had ever done.
Gabriel parted the two sides of the fake flesh until the opening was large enough for me to get my hand though. I pushed in and felt around the hollow area at the stomach, blindly groping around until my fingers closed on something crinkly and something cold.
I yanked my hand out. Clutched between my fingers: a slip of paper, and a key.
"Holy shit," Gabriel breathed.
The paper unfurled on its own, its solid black print a scream in the white-blue scheme of the room.
GAME OVER.
Game over. We had found the key.
"Let's go," I exclaimed, not bothering to push the drawer with the fake body back into the wall. Gabriel was two steps ahead of me, already shouldering open the morgue's door.
Officer Lubowski, meanwhile, could only open and close his mouth. "What is going on?" he managed.
"Officer, hurry," I shouted, already halfway down the hallway. "Call the police force. Tell them they're looking for Maire Reeve."
***
It was nearing 4AM in the morning, we had a tired officer puffing his heart out as he struggled to keep up with us, and the school gate was locked yet again.
"Alright, come on," Gabriel said, crouching. I got onto his shoulders. This had become an easy process now.
"What are you doing?" Officer Lubowski panted, finally catching up and doubling over beside us.
"Climbing," I replied. When I jumped this time, I secured a firmer grip on the top of the gate, and threw my legs over easily. I slid down, mashing my palm against the button that released the lock. Without waiting for Gabriel and Officer Lubowski to come through, I ran on.
Inside the gym, I hardly heeded the shadows and echoes of the eery, empty area while I hurtled through. There was nothing to fear except my imagination now. I skidded to the trapdoor, hauling it open and jumping in. My ankle twisted slightly at the landing, but I shook myself off, continuing towards the tunnel entrance by the way of the dim moonlight.
As I was pulling aside the flimsy, fake wall, Gabriel appeared through the trapdoor, stumbling onto a deflated soccer ball. Cursing, he fumbled for his flashlight and shone a beam into the room, just in time to see me disappear through the entrance.
"Hurry," I exclaimed.
"Officer Lubowski," I heard Gabriel shout once I had entered the tunnel and turned on my own flashlight. "Come on."
By the time I was at the giant underground barrier, almost barrelling straight into structure because of how fast I was going, I finally heard scuffles from the entrance echo through the tunnel, telling me they had only just come in. I kneeled by the keyhole, holding my breath.
"Hurry up," I called down the tunnel. I shoved the key in; I twisted.
I couldn't believe it. It worked.
The tumblers all turned, and then the door was groaning, popping out of its locks. The frame of the barrier remained bolted into the dirt, but the middle section moved on its hinges. I tugged at the handle, straining to pull the heavy, circular door wide open.
Gabriel and Officer Lubowski scuttled onto the scene then, the latter gasping in shock at the presence of such a strange sight.
"Hold on," Gabriel said, rushing forward to help me pull the door. We didn't open it all the way, only until there was enough of a gap for us to slip through. First me, then Gabriel, then Officer Lubowski, and then we were running down the remainder of the tunnel, suddenly turning right as it curved.
I halted, digging my heels into the ground.
The original tunnel that the builders had dug ended here, but it didn't lead to another room that would give way to an above-ground building where our parents were, like I had expected, like I had allowed myself to hope.
However, it didn't dead-end into a wall of dirt either, as per worst case scenario. No, instead, it dead-ended into a wall of stone.
"The builders must have miscalculated," Gabriel realised. "The path they dug collided right with the sewage system."
And it was not one single hidden entrance around town that had been used to enter the tunnel from this side, but the sewage system.
"No!" I screamed, stomping my foot down. "No!"
There was a neat hole cut into the thick stone, large enough to make it comfortable for climbing through frequently. When I peered through it, I saw an entire underground labyrinth—low, curved walls and dirtied floors that ran alongside the ditch of sewage water. Down every block, ladders crawled up the walls and touched beams of moonlight streaming in from drains above ground.
How were we supposed to find our parents? The sewers technically had entrances everywhere if we didn't mind the squeeze. Maire could have used any passage to enter this tunnel. Our parents could truly be hidden anywhere around Bottle Island.
Gabriel started pacing. I could practically feel his brainwaves emanating off of him. The issue now was that we didn't know if we should turn back, or mindlessly search the sewers.
"Officer Lubowski," I said, defeated. "How has the manhunt been going?"
"I'll be honest," he replied, reaching out to touch the stone wall. The wall was about as thick as the length of my hand—it must have taken multiple mighty power tools to cut the hole. "We haven't found anything yet."
"And you're not going to," I said dully, looking skyward. Maire was probably on the run now. She was too smart. She would use the time that we spent focusing on finding our parents to slip away, and she would leave them in whatever condition—dehydrated, starving, hurt.
I buried my hands into my hair, forcing myself to think. It was clear now that Maire was alive and Maire had been behind every threat and Maire had set up this entire ruse just so Crystal would be forced out of hiding. But where could she have taken our parents? Where could Maire Reeve have been staying this entire time, since her own holiday home was first a crime scene and then a bomb scene, and her old family home now belonged to someone else?
"What places haven't been searched yet?" Gabriel asked. "The town hall? The docks?"
"It's a small island," Officer Lubowski said, shaking his head. "All public places have been combed thoroughly. Your parents are either being kept at a residential address that we haven't yet checked, or they're being moved too often to find them."
No, it made no sense to move them, not when they could be recognised by anyone, not in so short of a time frame.
"A residential address," I repeated in a murmur. There weren't any residents who had reason to aid Maire. Our suspects list had run dry.
But suddenly, my hand flew out, clutching Gabriel's shoulder.
"Remember when we tracked the IP address?" I whispered. "What if it wasn't a trick?"
He inhaled sharply. "You don't think...?"
There was no time to hypothesise. I lunged for the hole in the wall and climbed through, landing in a puddle of dirty water.
"Move west," Gabriel instructed, "towards the coast."
"Hey! Where are we going?"
We ignored Officer Lubowski, who grumbled under his breath before climbing through the hole too and running after us.
There were many exits in the sewers, but we took none of them. We kept running. And running. And running.
"Luca, stop!"
I couldn't pull back in time. Our flashlights had been shining all over the place as we sprinted and pumped our arms vigorously. My brain hadn't been given enough time to register the sight when a metal grating was unexpectedly illuminated ahead of me.
We had reached the end of the line and I hadn't noticed, not when the outside of the sewer was just as dark as the inside, and the sound of the nearby ocean waves simply merged with the sound of blood rushing through my eardrums.
Only, I didn't ram into the grating and permanently concuss myself. Instead, the grating gave way underneath my weight easily, and came loose, cluttering onto the sand as I fell over it. I blinked, raising my hand to my face warily. A few scratches, nothing serious. I was lucky that the grating happened to be slightly taller than I was, otherwise if my head had knocked against the stone wall above it instead, I would be passed out.
"Luca!" Gabriel gasped. He ducked out of the sewers, scrambling to help me back up. "Are you hurt?"
"No, I'm okay," I breathed, wincing as my knees groaned. Officer Lubowski caught up to us, eyeing the loose grating as he ducked out too.
"Oh, dear."
I stood up, my feet sinking into sand, spinning in a slow circle. In front of me, the ocean carried on. Behind me, I saw that the entrance into the sewage system was blending neatly into its environment: where the beach connected with a wall of dirt to become a grassy bank, the entrance was hidden in this vertical shelf, almost unnoticeable behind the grassy roots.
The grassy bank itself melded with an abandoned backyard.
"We're here," I breathed. "The former house of Rebekah Gray and Beatrice Willis."
I scrambled up the bank, clawing onto the chunks of grass. Once I was off the beach, I stormed towards the house, searching for a way in.
"Look, the back door," Gabriel said, keeping pace right beside me. "It's open."
True enough, the back door had been left ajar. As Officer Lubowski started radioing the other officers, we dashed across the last stretch, flinging the door open.
The moment we entered the kitchen, I smelt lingering cigarette smoke.
"Dad?" I screamed.
"Mom? Dad?" Gabriel echoed.
We kept walking. There was a computer in the corner of the lounge. It was turned on but asleep, its idle screen flashing neon. Home base.
The house fell silent as we did, listening. It was a matter of who would give up their secrets first. Then: a thump. A muffled yell.
We bolted deeper into the house.
"The bedroom," Gabriel gasped, throwing open every door that he could find. "Find Beatrice's bedroom, from the footage."
It turned out that the third room down the hallway was the one we sought. When Gabriel slammed its door open, the bedroom from the footage came into existence, with its large bed and its patterned covers, its perpetually drawn curtains and its dusty floor.
"Listen, listen," I told Gabriel. We paused again, hands clutched in hope, hearts beating in tandem.
A muffled kick from the walk-in closet.
I rushed to the door.
I opened it.
Three figures were sat on the floor, mouths gagged and limbs tied—but very, very much unhurt and alive.
"Oh my god," I sobbed, collapsing down in front of Dad, removing the gag. "You're alright. Everything's alright."