Titans of Chaos

"Fourth dimension, magnetic powers, magic, brute strength. And you can open a locked door,too. I mean, you don't know for sure the lock is engaged, do you? No one knows what is inside awall."

She shook her head. "I can only find a secret passage if there might be one. Here there is nothing Ican work with: Too much attention has already been paid to these walls."

But Quentin said, "Leader! We cannot open this door."

"Why not?" she said. "Are you worried about the rules here? We're already breaking andentering."

He shook his head. "I don't know why, but I see the signs. This door is forbidden."

Vanity looked at me and I looked at the threads of moral energy in the place. "He's right," I said.

"But I don't see anything like that on the other doors. Why is this door different? I wonder if weshould abort."

Vanity said, "We can go in without touching the door."

Victor said, 'To get in without touching the door requires we break in through an adjoining wall,the outside window, the ceiling, or the floor."

Vanity said, "Amelia, if you would... ?"

"Gladly, Leader."

I have no idea what it looked like to them. I asked them to close their eyes anyway. I stood withone foot in the corridor and one foot in the room, with my leg going "over" the wall in the reddirection, without touching it. I picked up Vanity first, and ballet-lifted her from right to left, and Imade sure there were no wrinkles or rotations when I flattened their paper-doll bodies back intothe flat square that formed the room.

When it came Victor's turn, I balked. "Leader, I think it might be bad for him. He is kind ofthinner than you people are in the fourth dimension. I don't want to hurt him."

Quentin said, "He can go through the door. It won't see him."

Blue light dazzled from Victor's head, and the lock clicked of its own accord, and he walkedthrough. The azure light fell into the small, grim room and snuffed out Quentin's candle.

The man, Mortimer, stirred on the white metal-framed bed, opened his eyes, and sat up.

"Who're you?" His eyes were as blue and empty as a summer sky. Innocent. A child's eyes.

A dart of light left Victor's metallic third eye and flicked into the man's face. His eyelids drooped,and he lay back down, snoring before he hit the thin yellow pillow.

Vanity said, "What was that?"

Victor closed the door behind him. "Narcolepsy. I stimulated the pons area of the brain andactivated his sleep cycle."