DISCLAIMER: His Dark Materials belongs to Philip Pullman and affiliates.
Chapter Three
Dorado
Mary smiled, but spoke seriously. "I know you want to leave right now, Will, but we have to think ahead."
"About what?" demanded Will, glancing impatiently at the portal.
"We need to settle our affairs here, take you out of school, gather resources, and we may want to consider getting Kirjava," Mary reminded him.
"Oh, of course," Will said sadly, although he did understand Mary's reasoning. He turned towards the elevator and gasped, exclaiming, "Mary!"
Mary looked up from the computer monitor and saw a glowing green light above the lift, indicating someone was on it and descending to their level.
She cursed. "They must have picked us up on surveillance. Will – hide!"
Will looked around frantically. The only equipment the room contained was Polaris. His gaze fixed on it at the same time as Mary's.
"We'll have to–" he started.
"I know," she said. "But what about Kirjava?"
"It's okay, we've been worlds apart before. She'll be fine. We have to go now – if we don't, they'll catch us!"
Mary snapped back to the computer as a bell intoned the arrival of whoever was stepping off the elevator. She hit one last key and jumped beside Will, who was standing before the portal as the dark spheres started to generate a blinding energy that connected in the archway of the portal.
"Now!" Mary shouted. She and Will jumped onto the platform away from angry shouts behind her, and they both entered the portal without looking back.
Silence rang throughout the chamber as the light dissipated in the portal. Men in lab coats stared at the place where the intruders had disappeared. A dark bearded man turned to the closest scientist, who pensively contemplated the portal.
"Get me Burke!" he barked, and the quiet man picked up the phone next to the computer and dialed without protest.
The other scientists seemed to be suspended in place by their shock. They collectively started as the head of research spoke again.
"Right, the rest of you figure out where they went and see about preparing for an exploration to that world. We're going to find those people and retrieve them." He stared intently at the innocuous portal, jaw clenching, but visibly satisfied with his authority over the men around him. "Dr. Rolin, do you have him yet?"
Rolin looked up from the phone. "Yes sir, Mr. Burke is aware of the situation."
Dr. Lennox, head of research for the Constellation Project, took the phone from Rolin wordlessly to speak to his superior.
***
Mary and Will emerged from the portal in Dæmonatia in relief. Mary's dæmon rested on her shoulder, and Will glanced away from the sight, disquieted by a sense of emptiness. Even though it was not painful to be separated from Kirjava, her absence was still poignant in his heart.
Dorado, the portal to Lyra's world, was housed in a massive cavern that looked to be underground. As far as Mary knew, there hadn't been any disturbances caused by their arrival. Whoever ran this facility probably didn't expect intruders to come from the very thing they guarded heavily from outsiders.
There appeared to be only one exit from the dark room, and Will stepped off the portal towards it. As soon as his foot had touched the ground a whirring noise could be heard from somewhere beyond the door. Will paused, and he and Mary waited a few tense minutes before deciding the noise was coincidental.
The silence compounded on them as they exited the cavern and entered a long, unlit corridor.
"I wish we'd had more time to plan this," Mary said, brow furrowing. "I wish I knew more about the portals and their locations before coming here."
"Too late now," Will said, not managing to hide his pleasure in their hasty escape.
"Don't get ahead of yourself, Will," the young scientist said critically. "We haven't reached Lyra yet. For all we know, we could be very far away from Oxford. We have to take this one step at a time, and focus on finding a way out of this place without getting caught before thinking about looking for her."
"Okay," Will said agreeably, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he walked. Mary shook her head and hid her smile.
The two inter-world travelers passed through a maze of corridors, searching for anything that might lead to an exit. The distant whirring noise they had heard upon arrival had not ceased.
Turning from one dark passage to the next, Will held Mary back as he heard the distant sound of someone speaking in the darkness. The voice faded, and Will gestured to Mary to follow it silently. She nodded and they crept along the corridor as quietly as possible, cringing when the floor beneath scraped against loose rocks they tread on.
Mary and Will followed their unseen guide, unwittingly getting closer when the person would stop talking, and freezing at the proximity they had gained to the person when the low voice spoke again.
"Absolutely ridiculous," Mary heard clearly ahead, grabbing Will's arm to stop him from moving. "Intruders indeed," the man's voice muttered, continuing on his way. Mary let out a breath she'd been holding before the resumed following the guard.
After another tense fifteen minutes of silent pursuit, the unlit corridors gradually became lighter and clearer to their eyes. Before long Mary and Will could see the outline of the guard in front of them, a dark bulge on his shoulder presumably his dæmon, and who he had been talking to.
Mary looked at the Alpine chough on her shoulder which hadn't communicated to her yet and glanced at Will, wondering if he was worried about Kirjava. How would they travel through Lyra's world without drawing attention to the fact that Will looked to be a severed child?
Later, she thought, shaking herself of these worries. As she had told Will earlier, they had to focus on the situation at hand.
By this time the guard had reached a nondescript door and pulled out a card-key to put into a slot beside it, passing through once the door opened. Will rushed forward to grab the door before it shut. He stared at the card-key slot and looked at Mary to see his confusion mirrored in her face. Why was technology from their world being used in the dæmon world?
Will peeked through the open door and went through it once he had determined there was no one in the room beyond. They entered another cavern similar to the one housing Dorado, but much smaller in size and it was obviously an exit to outside the facility. An enormous vault door stood in imposing steel, flanked by large, thick windows that had sunlight streaming through them, and a view of a city that could be seen in the distance.
"Looks like the guard left," Mary said, approaching the card-key slot and giving it a closer look.
Will wasn't listening. He was gazing out the bullet-proof glass to the city beyond. He hadn't really registered that he had traveled to another world for the first time in four years, the first time without the Subtle Knife. Somewhere beyond this cavern, perhaps in the city that lay before them, Lyra was there. Something was restored and strengthened in his heart at that thought, only slightly dampened by a belated feeling of guilt.
"Mary," Will said quietly, "When – when we went through, did we create a specter?" he asked, still gazing out at the world beyond.
Mary stepped up beside him and watched a lone starling wheel about in the sky. "I'm not sure," she said truthfully. "It's actually one of the main reasons I wished we had more time to plan for this, because I didn't study the portals thoroughly. The Subtle Knife rent a window between worlds, which caused the specter to appear. The portals gather Dust in the spheres – you saw that when we were about to go through – and uses it to transport objects from one world to the next. I don't know all of the reactions behind it, but I don't think it does create specters.
"My theory, from as much as little as I've learned about the portals, is that they send concentrated Dust to each other. Do you remember telling me about the world of the dead, and how we all become Dust once we pass through it? It's similar to that, except the Dust doesn't scatter, it's sent and reconstructs whatever it's carrying at the other end. Namely, us."
"We became Dust?" Will asked incredulously.
"Yes, I think we did," Mary said, inspecting the hills in the distance.
"The feeling – I've never felt like…"
"I know. I imagine we, and anyone who has gone through the portals, has gotten a taste of what it'll feel like after we die."
Will fell silent, amazed at the revelation.
Mary turned to him. "But enough about that. We have to find a way out of here, and then, to Lyra."
***
A/N: My beta Mia asked about something Will says, in that he and Kirjava have been worlds apart before, so to clear up confusion: When Lyra (and Will, although unwittingly) left their daemons on the shore to travel to the world of the dead, they could travel quite independently:
"Some of us will remain here for a little while, and we shall need you to let us into Lord Asriel's world, because he might need out help. What's more," he went on somberly, looking at Lyra, "you'll need to travel there yourselves, if you want to find your daemons again. Because that's where they've gone." –John Parry, The Amber Spyglass, Chapter 26, 'The Abyss', page 362 (Hardcover Edition)
Many thanks for all the reviews and to Sorina and Mia for beta-ing.
