Their footsteps echo on the marble, attracting Dr. Moriah’s attention at the head of the group. She watches them approach, stroking her snake between the eyes. The students stand in rows, protégés next to their mentors, their backs to Dez and Rafe, about fifteen feet of distance between them and the next pair. Dez notices a gap in the center of the formation and follows Rafe to fill it.
“Nice of you to join us,” Moriah says.
“Desdemona’s access was … atypical,” Rafe says, causing all the students to look her way.
The way Rafe says it makes Dez wonder if there’s something defective about her access, what she saw in the kinetoscope. Whether this, like everything else, is her fault.
“Let’s begin,” Moriah says. “Welcome to the Vault. This room is an archive of information that will facilitate your films. It holds … everything that matters. In a moment, your Lenses will drop, and your mentors will guide you through the process of using them. Your Lenses will replace any filmmaking equipment you have been accustomed to working with before. They are all you’ll need to make your films.”
“What kind of software—” Paul Rowan asks from the front row.
“Your mentors will make everything clear that needs to be clear,” Moriah says. “The rest you’ll do well to take on faith. Today is October first. Your first assignments are due no later than our midterm recess, one month from today. If I were you, I’d waste no time.”
A low harmonized humming sounds above, and when Dez looks up, the ceiling appears to be slowly caving in. No, she sees, it’s a cluster of large, black cubes releasing from the branches of the stained-glasstree in the ceiling. Dozens of them drop in tandem, speeding toward the student’s heads like supplies air-dropped on a beleaguered village. Simon shrieks. Dez hears Alice Quinn quietly praying.
Dez stands still, looking up with a mix of anticipation and fear until, two feet before the cube slams into her head, it suddenly stops moving, caught by a long black cable.
“That’s your Lens,” Rafe says. “Take it in your hands.”
Dez looks around, sees the other protégés being guided to do the same. Nearby, Esther’s mentor Felipe stands close behind her, his arm threading around Esther’s body to help her guide the Lens closer. On the other side of Dez, Yael says huskily near Alice Quinn’s ear:
“You touch it when I give you permission to touch it, understand?”
“Forget about them,” Rafe says quietly. “It’s just you and me, okay?”
Dez nods, reaches up, and pulls the cube closer, tilts it so it’s parallel to her eyes, the way you’d position a laptop screen.
“How does it work?”
“Lean forward,” Rafe says. “It needs to scan your eyes to know it’s you.”
Dez moves her face close to the screen …
Moriah’s cobra lunges at her, its mouth open, full of fangs, its eyes as wide as oranges.
Dez recoils—and notices every other first-year also shrieking and recoiling. Somehow the albino cobra is coiled around each of their Lens’s cables. Alice Quinn is crouched on the ground as Yael kicks her to get up.
“What’s happening?” Dez asks.
“Stillness,” Rafe says. “Trust the process.”
All at once the cobras vanish into pixilated air. Another special effect. And Dez’s Lens starts curving like a personal IMAX, until it encircles her and Rafe’s faces. Slowly, smoothly the screen expands vertically in both directions, dropping to the floor like a curtain, thenrising to form a dome about eight feet in diameter and several more feet above their heads.
Then the screen turns from black to pale gray, lighting the space, casting a glow upon their faces.
“You’re not in Death Valley anymore, are you?” Rafe says.
“This is …” Dez looks around, at a loss for words.
“Expensive?”
“Sure, but I was going to say—”
“Sexy?”
Dez looks at him, so close to her, and remembers the pop of her shirt button last night when Rafe recklessly ripped it open.
Who knew that bodice ripping could go exactly nowhere?
