Felix sighed, desperate, and hit play again.
The black stared back at him, peaceful and still. A flash erupted as the camera’s lens came to life, and the burglar was there again, darting across the room, dodging the tables, opening every cabinet. Then the camera crashed downward again.
“Felix, I know you want to help, but . . . ,” Naomi tried, but he didn’t look away. He scrolled back yet again and watched the familiar room as Wally darted in and out of view, studying its thick old walls, its towering double-paned, wrought-iron windows. The shelves, the desks, the tables—
Wait.
There wasn’t a door there in the library.
“How—” He gasped, confused.
“What is it?” Priya asked, leaning closer. “What do you see?”
Felix pointed. There was a door in the back wall of the reading room in the video—even though that was impossible.
What was going on?
Felix grabbed his mouse and scrolled back on the timer, frames stuttering, this time dragging it much, much further back, hours before the relevant break-in section, all the way to when the security guard first began his walking rotations after hours, around nine o’clock in the evening. Felix waited on the Map Division, watching the dark screen as the guard moved down the hall, and then the room came to life, the camera triggered by his motion—
There was no door.
Felix hit pause and rubbed his eyes again, trying to clear his head.
He could still see the Map Division perfectly in his mind, even after all these years. He knew that side of the room well—he’d been in charge of dusting the display cases there every Monday morning. There was definitely not a door there, only the glass cabinets and a small expanse of wall they sometimes used to hang single-piece specimens belonging to no collection. A door couldn’t be there. If one was, it would open directly into the huge bay of printers Swann had installed in the back-office archives. And Felix had just seen when the guard entered the Map Division that there wasn’t one.
But somehow, during the break-in—and also on the Sanborn map Nell had—there was.
“Felix, what are we looking at?” Naomi asked. Neither she nor Priya knew the details of the room as well as he did. “What do you see?”
“Just watch,” he said breathlessly. “One more time.”
He skipped forward all the way to midnight again, to when the break-in occurred, and hit play.
He pointed at the spot on the screen where he wanted them to look. “Watch.”
The room came to life the same as it had in the previous viewings of the security footage. Wally appeared, triggering the camera, and began searching the room. He had a small piece of paper in his gloved hand, Felix realized this time. A list? A diagram? A map? It was in one frame before Wally moved again, barely visible in the grainy night vision—
And the door was there.
The camera was hit and tilted down at the table again. Felix hit pause and jumped back in time to the security guard’s first nine o’clock walking check.
There was no door.
“What the . . . ,” Naomi said, seeming now to see what Felix had just found.
This didn’t make sense.
Felix skipped forward to the break-in on the feed.
There was a door.
He skipped back.
There was no door.
He skipped forward.
There was a door.
How was that possible?
Romi