Journey Through the Mirrors by T. R. Williams

them to see that it was empty. They both lowered their weapons, confounded. It bumped into the dock, its motor still running. “That’s weird. Call it in,” the older agent said.
    As the younger agent took out his PCD and started walking back to shore, he heard a muffled thump. Turning, he saw his partner lunge forward and fall into the lake. The young agent rushed to help him but was stopped by a sharp pain in his side. The last thing he saw was someone in a black diving suit.
    The howling of the coyotes grew louder as the intruder pulled himself out of the water. With his gun still drawn, he walked to the end of the dock and made sure that the young agent was dead. He rolled thebody off the deck and into the water, next to the floating body of his partner. Then he pulled his PCD from the water-tight compartment of his wetsuit and pressed a few buttons, and the boat’s motor stopped running. After replacing his PCD in the pocket of his wetsuit, the man lowered himself into the water, grabbed each of the WCF agents by an arm, and, staying close to the dock, waded closer to shore. The dock led to a utility house adjacent to the steps leading to the Château’s lakeside entrance. But that was not going to be his means of entry. There was another way into the dungeons of Château Dugan.
    A few meters before he reached the shore, he ducked under the dock and maneuvered himself through the support beams, struggling at times to maintain control of the agents’ bodies. He came to a steel-barred door, similar to those found in old-fashioned jail cells. The cold lake water flowed freely through the iron bars. He pulled from the pocket of his wetsuit a brass key. But when he pressed on the door’s handle, he found it unlocked. Returning the key to his chest pocket, he opened the door and pushed the bodies through the doorway before entering the dark tunnel himself. He took out his PCD and attached it to his left wrist, pressing buttons until the body suit he was wearing began to glow, providing ample light. He pressed more buttons on his PCD, and the image of a hand-drawn map was displayed. He’d been warned that the secret tunnels under the estate were like a rat’s maze, where a person could easily get lost. He shut the iron door and proceeded.
    After a series of left and right turns, the man stood in front of a brick wall spanning the width of the narrow tunnel. The man reached down and ran his hands along the lower portion of the wall below the water line. He took a deep breath and submerged himself. A moment later, he popped out of the water on the other side of the wall. He cleared his eyes and saw that he was at the bottom of the Château’s well. He intensified the light from his suit until he could see the top, which he ascertained was twenty meters above him. A narrow spiral staircase ran up the interior. Using the wall as a support, he carefully climbedthe slippery, mold-covered steps. After about three minutes, he reached the top of the well and slung himself over the edge. He had made it unnoticed into the dungeons.
    The luminosity from his suit filled the large circular area, where eight iron doors lined its circumference; the handles of each door had been removed. There was security tape across each doorway, indicating that the WCF had searched them all.
    The man projected another hand-drawn map from his PCD. He zoomed in on the configuration of the eight doors and the nearby staircase. A red marker indicated that the room he was interested in was three doors to the right of the staircase. He walked over and ripped off the security tape. He pushed the door open, its hinges squeaking as he entered. There was a musky, damp smell in the air.
    The man walked across the stone floor, past a couple of metal buckets and a metal chair, toward the northeast corner of the room. Once there, he took a magnet out of his pocket. Starting at the floor, he slowly ran it up the corner of the wall until it was drawn to a